The Grammar Doctor

Dangling Participle

To most people a dangling participle sounds like a serious, possibly fatal physical problem. In fact it is only a problem with a modifier.
A participle is a word that looks like a verb, but it functions as an adjective:

He was a loving husband, but he could not fix the broken chair.

When a participle is part of a phrase at the beginning of a sentence, we expect the phrase to describe the subject of the sentence:

Walking down Congress Street, Smedley saw a pink Cadillac.
" Walking down Congress Street" describes Smedley. It tells what he was doing when he saw the pink Cadillac.

Let's change that sentence slightly and see what happens:

Walking down Congress Street, a pink Cadillac was seen.

Since we expect " walking down Congress Street" to describe the subject of the sentence, it sounds as though a pink Cadillac is walking down the street. Obviously that is not what was intended.
The participle " walking down Congress Street" is called dangling because the word it is supposed to describe (Smedley) is not in the sentence at all.

Dangling participles create unintended ludicrous effects:


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