You’re at the office. The vice president of passive-aggressive memos has just sent out his latest missive, an attack on one person disguised as a blanket edict for all. (He calls this leadership; everyone else calls it something that sounds like chicken-ship.) His memo is as follows:
Despite our clearly defined policy regarding the break-room coffeemaker, employees are still not taking responsibility for turning it off at night. Therefore, we’re instituting a new policy regarding the use of the coffeemaker. From now on, everyone—not just the person who brewed the last pot but everyone—must check the coffeemaker before leaving at night. Clocking out every evening, the coffeepot should be in the forefront of your mind.
What do you do, hotshot? Do you:
If you’re like me, you know that not even revenge is worth breaking up your collection of Tom Cruise memorabilia. Thus the best option is D.: Expose the VP for the dangling dork that he is. Here’s how.
Note the last sentence in his memo: “Clocking out every evening, the coffeepot should be in the forefront of your mind.” Note that the coffeepot doesn’t clock in or out (it’s salaried). And voilà, you’ve spotted his small but clearly exposed little dangler.
“Dangling participle” may be the quintessentially alienating grammar term, at once intimidating, annoying, and memorable. It’s a term normal people sometimes use to make fun of uptight grammar sticklers—an example of how ridiculously user-unfriendly grammar can be.
In fact, dangling participles and danglers in general describe what may be the single simplest rule of language: Make sense.
Consider these two sentences:
Panting in the heat, my shirt stuck to my body.
Stoned on Nyquil, the walls in my room seemed to be moving.
It doesn’t take a master’s degree in English to see there’s something wrong here, though it often does require a postgraduate education to know that this very self-evident problem is termed a dangling participle.
A participle is pretty much what it sounds like—a piece of a multipart verb. Consider the multipart verbs “have walked” and “am walking.” They consist of “auxiliary,” or “helping,” verbs—“have” and “am”—and a final part, usually ending in “-ing” or “-ed” or sometimes “-en.” This final part is what’s known as the participle.
For purposes of covering your dangler, you need only to think of participles as words ending in “-ing,” “-ed” and “-en.” So to avoid dangling, just take note every time you write a sentence that begins with one of these words. Then simply double-check to make sure that the person or thing performing the action in the second part of the sentence is the same person or thing that was performing the action described in the “-ing” or “-ed” verb in the first part of the sentence.
To make clear that it was not your shirt that was panting in the heat, write, “Panting in the heat, I felt my shirt sticking to my body.”
To make clear that your walls, unlike you, always say no to Nyquil, write, “Stoned on Nyquil, I thought the walls were moving.”
Sometimes the participles have shorter words such as “upon” before the “-ing,” “-ed,” or “-en” word:
Upon sending the memo, the staff knew that the vice president was a man of incredible java-related wisdom.
Technically, this sentence says that the staff sent the memo, when we know that really it was the VP. “While,” “on,” and “upon” are a few of the words that sometimes come into play in this way.
Dangling participles are probably the most common danglers, but there are other kinds, too. Happily, these are just as easy to understand and avoid:
A man of incredible vision, the coffeepot debacle was solved by the company vice president.
Even though the previous sentence does not begin with a participle, the man is dangling all the same. The above sentence should be:
A man of incredible vision, the company vice president solved the coffeepot debacle.
Or, even more precisely:
Formerly a man of incredible vision, the VP’s eyesight was permanently blurred after an employee cracked a coffeepot over his head.
So of all the grammar terms you could fear, “dangling participle” should be at the bottom of your list. Despite how intimidating the term sounds, despite the intentions of any grammar snob who might try to use it to disarm you with his dazzling genius, it really is as simple as just remembering to make sense. And that’s much easier than remembering to turn off the coffeemaker.