Clear and present dangle

JUNE CASAGRANDE

Is that a dangler in your press release? Or are you just happy you

wrote anything?

Last week, I got onto the subject of participles and felt a little

guilty for sidestepping the most notorious participle of all: the

dangler. (I also felt a little guilty for roughing up a TV news

personality, but measurably less so. Actually, now that I think about

it, I’m feeling pretty good about that.)

The term “dangling participle” is the quintessential example of

why grammar scares the bejesus out of so many people. Everyone seems

to have some fuzzy, nightmarish memory of hearing the term in school

and being expected to understand it. Yet no one can seem remember

what on earth it means.

Well, I’ve got some good news. You don’t have to know what it

means. I hereby decree that, from this day forward, you may go

through the rest of your life in blissful ignorance of this term yet

100% certain that you’re not accidentally embarrassing yourself by

dangling something for the world to see. To do this, you need only

follow this two-word imperative: Make sense. Or, in its expanded

form, make sense, darn it!

Consider this sentence: Walking home from the beach, my surfboard

was getting so heavy I could barely carry it.

What is it that doesn’t make sense here? (Please be seated. This

may come as a shock.) Surfboards can’t walk!

Every time anyone has ever used the term “dangling participle” in

your presence, this is the sole idea they were trying to convey

(unless it was a euphemism for something we won’t be discussing

here).

See, participles are pieces of two- and three- and sometimes

four-word verb forms. “I was insulting someone in this column last

week.” The “was” is half of this verb, called the “auxiliary.” The

“insulting” is the other half, which happens to be called a

participle. Participles usually end in -ing, -ed and -en. Some are

irregular, such as the past participle of “sew,” which is “sewn.”

Whenever you start a sentence with a word that ends in -ing or any

other participle, you’re creating a danger that the second half of

the sentence won’t match the first half.

“Sewn to fit a 7-year-old, she felt pinched in her tight

zebra-striped pants.”

It was not “she” who had been sewn. It was her pants. (Let us hope

they were sewn well.)

Not all danglers are dangling participles, but it’s all the same

basic idea. Make sure that your first clause “agrees” with the part

after the comma -- your second clause. In the surfboard sentence, it

would have been better to say “While I was walking down the beach, my

surfboard ... .” But it’s still OK to start with “walking” as long as

the walking is being done by the upcoming subject: “Walking home from

the beach, I was nearly crushed under the weight of my heavy and

unwieldy surfboard.”

It’s that simple.

Go forth, now, little business writers, and never dangle again.

* JUNE CASAGRANDE covers Newport Beach and John Wayne Airport. She

may be reached at (949) 574-4232 or by e-mail at

june.casagrande@latimes.com.