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.
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