It was the best of sentences, it was the worst of sentences - June Casagrande 2010

Dangler danger: Participles and other danglers

Running down the street in high heels, my dog was too fast for me to catch.

Really? Your dog wears high heels? That's hot.

Walking down the beach, my shoulders got sunburned.

How nice of your shoulders to give your feet a break from all that walking.

Stuffed with chestnuts, Peter served the turkey.

Why was Peter eating so many chestnuts right before dinner?

In the last chapter, we saw how prepositional phrases work as modifiers. In the chapter before that, we saw how relative clauses work as modifiers. In this chapter, we'll look at how participial units like walking down the beach and stuffed with chestnuts can also be modifiers. There's just one problem: no one knows whether we should call these units phrases or clauses.

And when I say no one, I mean no one.

Some expert sources, including The Oxford English Grammar and The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, usually call these participial clauses. Other expert sources, including veteran grammar teacher and grammar-book author Laurie Rozakis, PhD, say they're phrases. Still other experts say the difference is just a matter of interpretation—theoretical stuff that doesn't affect how we handle them. One of these experts is Cambridge Grammar of the English Language coauthor Geoffrey Pullum. I e-mailed him myself to ask.

It's not about what you call them. It's about where you put them. Put one in the wrong place, and it qualifies as a misplaced modifier, just as prepositional phrases like with round bottom for efficient beat-ing do.

A participle is a verb form that usually ends in ing, ed, or en. The -ing form is called the progressive participle. The -ed and -en forms are called past participles, though irregular verbs don't follow the pattern: shown, brought, led, dealt, leapt, seen, and so on, are all past participles. Past participles work with forms of have and progressive participles work with forms of be to form different verb conjugations: We have walked, Joe is walking, and so on.

But you can also use a participle to modify a noun—just like an adjective. Look at painted in They have painted the wall and It's a painted wall. In the first example, it's part of a verb. In the second, it is essentially an adjective. Another example: Life has broken Henry and Henry is a broken man.

A participial phrase or clause, then, is simply any participle that serves as a modifier. And it can do so with or without accessories:

Exhausted, Harry fell into bed.

Exhausted from the long hike, Harry fell into bed.

Speeding, Nanette hit a pole.

Speeding in her Ferrari, Nanette hit a pole.

Eating, Dave almost choked.

Eating pastrami, Dave almost choked.

Either way, a participial phrase or clause can be seen as a modifier. It modifies a noun or pronoun. So from our examples, who was exhausted? Harry. And who was speeding? Nanette. Harry and Nanette are the nouns being modified by those participial units.

Now identify what's wrong with this sentence:

Daydreaming about Nanette, Dan's foot went right into

a puddle.

Either Dan has one smart foot, or we have on our hands the legendary beast known as the dangling participle.

A dangling participle is simply a participle that seems to point to the wrong noun.

As we saw in our chapter on prepositional phrases, Readers usually expect a modifier to refer to the closest noun. That's why, in our last example, we're suggesting that Dan's foot was daydreaming and not Dan. To fix these, just make sure that you've chosen the right noun—for example, "Dan" instead of "foot"—and that the participial phrase or clause that's modifying it is as close as possible.

Daydreaming about Nanette, Dan stepped in a puddle.

You can also make your participial phrase or clause into a subordinate clause so it's no longer a modifier and therefore no longer has to be right next to whatever it's modifying:

While Dan was daydreaming about Nanette, his foot went right into a puddle.

That's it. That's as hard it gets. Get past the fear of the grammar jargon and you see that dangling participles are very simple.

Participles aren't the only things that can dangle:

A Kentucky Derby-winning colt, Thunderbolt's jockey was very proud.

Did you catch it? We just called the jockey a colt. This is a tricky one because it looks as though the colt, Thunderbolt, comes right after the modifier. But no. We didn't write Thunderbolt. We wrote Thunderbolt's, rendering it a modifier. In the noun phrase Thunderbolt's jockey, the headword jockey, not Thunderbolt's.

There's one more danger with participles. Because some are identical to gerunds, they can get confusing:

Visiting relatives can be fun.

Does this mean that the act of visiting (visiting as a gerund) can be fun, or that relatives who are visiting you (visiting as a modifier) can be fun? We don't know. Subtler examples crop up all the time in professional writing:

Here are the trends leading interior designers and industry experts across the country have predicted will be hot this season.

After pausing, the Reader can see that leading is an adjective modifying interior designers and not an action being performed by trends. But it's usually best not to force the Reader to do a doubletake:

Here are the trends that leading interior designers and industry experts across the country have predicted will be hot this season.

The best way to avoid danglers is to stay vigilant. After a while it becomes a working part of the brain. Considering how much this can help your sentences, it's worth the effort.