Month: October 2007

by Jennie Ruby

Note: In the examples below, asterisks indicate a grammatically incorrect sentence.

One of the most well-known, but not understood, grammar errors is the dangling participle. Because its name is unusual to the point of amusement, many students remember hearing it in some long-ago English class. But those same students may not remember how to recognize and then correct this pernicious error. First we need to know: what is a participle? Then we will look into how it can "dangle."

A participle is a verb form. There are two kinds: past participles and present participles. Present participles are easy to recognize because they end with -ing. Past participles mostly end with -ed, but sometimes end with -en or -n or -t. Here are some examples:   Present participles:

• walking
• driving
• editing
• prevaricating

Past participles:

• packed
• aligned
• written
• thrown
• built

These verb forms can actually be the verb in a sentence, as in "I am walking to the library," where walking is the action. But at other times participles can be used as adjectives, as in "I often use a walking stick," where walking is describing the noun stick. Participles used as adjectives are the ones that can "dangle," when the noun (or pronoun) they are describing is not in the sentence–or not in the correct form. Here is an example where the participle is dangling because the word it is describing is not in the sentence:

*Walking over the rough ground, balance was difficult.*

The word walking is describing something or someone. Who? We don’t know, because there is no person or thing in the sentence who could be described as walking. The word being described should be right after the comma at the end of the participial phrase "walking over the rough ground." Here is a correct use of a participle at the beginning of a sentence:

Walking over the rough ground, I found it hard to keep my balance.

Now it is clear that the participle is describing the pronoun I, which appears right after the comma. Next let’s look at an example where the word being described is not in the right form:

*Walking over the rough ground, my backpack strap broke.*

Here, the first word after the comma does refer to a person who could be described as walking, but not in the correct form. My or me cannot be used here. The pronoun has to be I, the subject form of the pronoun. The same thing is true of nouns: if a noun is in this location, it must be the subject of the remainder of the sentence. It cannot be a possessive form such as stick’s or Carol’s. Here is a correct sentence:   Walking over the rough ground, I broke my backpack strap.

Now that you can recognize a dangling participle, you can make sure the noun it is describing is in the right location, right after the comma.   

About the Author: Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Essentials of Access 2000" and "Editing with MS Word 2003 and Adobe Acrobat 7" to her credit. Jennie specializes in electronic editing. At the American Psychological Association, she was manager of electronic publishing and manager of technical editing and journal production. Jennie has an M.A. from George Washington University and is a Certified Technical Trainer (Chauncey Group). She is a publishing professional with 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing.

Want help with a grammar issue? Email us your troubles and we’ll turn Jennie loose!

by Quinn McDonald

When I left the voicemail that said "Please call me at noon" there wasn’t a problem, but when I used the dropbox on the customer service website for a problem I was having, I checked "12 p.m." The question was "Pick a time you will be at the number you gave us–we will call anytime within two hours of the start time." Noon to 2 p.m. sounded like a good choice.

When my phone rang at midnight, I had forgotten about the drop-down box. Sure enough, it was a customer-service representative, outsourced to a more convenient time location. Hearing my sleepy voice, he said, "I wondered why you wanted a call at midnight."

"Noon. I picked noon." I said.

"Oh, no, madam, 12 p.m. is midnight."

"Ummm, no. Actually the PM stands for ‘post meridian,’ which means, after the sun crosses the meridian, or highest part in the sky. That’s noon, so PM is after noon. AM is ‘ante meridian’ and it means before the sun crosses the highest point– noon."
"No, 12 pm is midnight. It is surely after noon when it is dark."
I dropped the issue and got on with my customer service problem, which he handily solved.

The next day, I wondered why the time issue had even come up. A little research showed me the reason–most of the rest of the world uses a 24-hour clock, like the military. A surprisingly few number of nations use the "am/pm" designation.

In most of the rest of the world, after noon, the numbers add onto 12–so 1 pm is 1300 hours, 2:30 pm is 1430, and so on. Midnight is 0000 or 2400, depending on the country. The morning hours are written with four digits–6 am is 0600.

In Swedish (though in Sweden the 12-hour clock is nowadays rarely used) am and pm they are "fm" and "em". Greece uses letter combinations, but like most other languages, formal abbreviations for "before noon" and "after noon" is left for verbal or informal communication.

Who knew? It never occurred to me that the Latin designations weren’t universal. But for those drop-down boxes, I’m going to choose times that lend themselves to fewer mistakes.

About the Author: Quinn McDonald is a writer, certified creativity coach and trainer in business communications. See more of her work at Quinncreative.wordpress.com

About The Book:

I’ve been teaching Captivate for years. At the end of a two-day class, my students have all the skills they need to create highly interactive computer-based training simulations (CBTs) using Captivate.

Some time ago a student, just prior to leaving class the last day, asked how she could focus her writing skills and create clean, step-by-step documentation she could use for her Captivate storyboards. She said she had searched and searched and could not find a class designed specifically for creating step-by-step documentation.

I had another student ask me if I had a style guide he could "borrow" so that he could create a corporate style guide to be used for all of their Captivate CBTs. Based on those conversations, I created this book. Part 1 of the book is designed to focus your writing skills and help you create concise step-by-step documentation. Part 2 of this book is the Style Guide and Process document I created for use at IconLogic.

Here is what is covered in the book:

Part 1: Script Writing

The Process | Ignorance Is Not a Dirty Word | The Audience | The Subject Matter Expert (SME) | Find and Promote the "Wow" Factor | Rules for Writing and Tools of the Trade | Hard-News Writing | Feature Writing | Technical and Script Writing | Avoid Plagiarism | Writing Style Guides | So Many Guides, So Little Time

Grammar Workshop

Comma Inside or Comma Outside the Quotation Mark? | Less is More, But is Fewer Very Much? | Led/Lead/Leading/Leading | When We Join Things, Are They Always Plural? | Commas Between Adjectives | Hyphens

Writing Workshop

Active vs. Passive Voice | Death to Deadwood | Writing Concisely | Writing Narratives | Writing Step-By-Step Procedures | Sample Script

Part 2: Production & Style Guide

The CBT Development Process

Adobe Captivate 3 Preferences | Global Settings | Recording Settings | Full Motion Recording Settings | Recording Keys Settings | Custom Recording Mode Settings | Display Settings | Screen Resolution | Desktop Wallpaper and Icons | Windows XP Display Properties | Windows Vista Personalized Settings | The Recording Phase | Download the Template | Record a Project Using a Template

Production Phase

Version Control | Project Settings | The Cleanup Process | Slide Properties | Text Captions | Buttons | Click Boxes | Text Entry Boxes | Audio/Narration | Publishing Audio Scripts | Importing Narration Files | Pre-Publish Settings | Project Start and End | Project Background Audio | Project Skin | Project Info | Publishing Projects | Publishing for an LMS | Publishing for a Web Server