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.
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