Dangling Modifier - Dangling Participles and Participial Clauses

Dangling Participles and Participial Clauses

Participles or participial clauses may be at the beginning or the end of a sentence, and a participial clause is usually attached to its subject, as in "Walking down the street (clause), the man (subject) saw the beautiful trees (object)." However, when the subject is missing or the participle attaches itself to another object in a sentence, the clause is seemingly "hanging" on nothing or on an entirely inappropriate noun. It thus becomes a dangling participle, as in these sentences:

In the first sentence, the "walking down" participle modifies "trees," the subject of the sentence. However, the trees are presumably not themselves walking down Main Street. The participle in fact modifies the unmentioned speaker of the sentence, the one doing the walking (and finding the trees beautiful).

In the second sentence, "reaching" is the dangling participle that nonsensically qualifies "sun," the subject of the sentence; thus, the meaning is as if the sun came out when it, "the sun," reached the station. Presumably, there is another, human subject that did reach the station and observed the sun coming out, but since this subject is not mentioned in the text, the intended meaning is obscured, and therefore this kind of sentence is considered incorrect in standard English.

Strunk and White's The Elements of Style provides another kind of example, a misplaced modifier (another participle):

Presumably, this means the speaker was peeking through the window, but the placement of the clause "peeking through the window" makes it sound as though the trailer were peeking through the window. More correctly, it can be written as, "Peeking through the window, I saw the trailer."

Similarly, in the sentence "She left the room fuming", it is conceivably the room, rather than "she", that was fuming. It may be preferable to write "Fuming, she left the room", to eliminate the ambiguity and make clear that "fuming" modifies the subject of the sentence ("she").

Strunk and White describe as "ludicrous" another of their examples: "Being in a dilapidated condition, I was able to buy the house very cheap."

The author obviously meant the house was dilapidated. But what he wrote was that he (the speaker or writer, identified as "I") was in a dilapidated condition.

Bernstein offers another ludicrous example: "Roaring down the track at seventy miles an hour, the stalled car was smashed by the train."

"Roaring," the participle, is meant to modify "train": it is the train that is roaring down the track. But the participial phrase is attached to the grammatical subject of the sentence, car. The writer is saying that the stalled car, which really isn't moving at all, is roaring down the track. Correctly written, the sentence would read: "Roaring down the track at seventy miles an hour, the train smashed the stalled car." Alternatively (but wordier): "The stalled car was smashed by the train, which was roaring down the track at seventy miles an hour."

Follett provides yet another ludicrous example: "Leaping to the saddle, his horse bolted."

Did the horse leap into the saddle? That's what the writer said. But it can't be what he meant. Who did leap into the saddle? Presumably the horseman – certainly not the horse, which was wearing the saddle. In this example, the noun or pronoun intended to be modified isn't even in the sentence. Correct: "Leaping to the saddle, he made his horse bolt forward." Also correct: "As he leaped into the saddle, his horse bolted." In this second revision, the solution is to abandon the participial clause by transforming the participle "leaping" into the verb "leaped" in the dependent clause "As he leaped into the saddle."

These examples illustrate a writing principle that dangling participles violate. Follett states the principle: "A participle at the head of a sentence automatically affixes itself to the subject of the following verb – in effect a requirement that the writer either make his subject consistent with the participle or discard the participle for some other construction." Strunk and White put it this way: "A participial phrase at the beginning of a sentence must refer to the grammatical subject."

Dangling participles should not be confused with clauses in absolute constructions, which are considered grammatical. Because the participial phrase in an absolute construction is not semantically attached to any single element in the sentence, it is easily confused with a dangling participle. The difference is that the participial phrase of a dangling participle is intended to modify a particular noun or pronoun, but is instead erroneously attached to a different noun, whereas as an absolute clause is not intended to modify any noun at all. An example of an absolute construction is: