Correctly Placing Misplaced Modifiers

 Alas, I constantly edit, even when I'm not being paid for it, the author didn't ask for it, and I can't actually share it. It's just a compulsion that happens as I read, especially news stories that have presumably already been edited. 

And heck, why not share the compulsion here? Maybe someone will learn from it. I do 'revision sessions' sometimes with students, just editing on-screen and explaining as I go, and this misplaced modifier problem is one of the most common and also one of the most easily fixed mistakes.

In a sentence, a "modifier" is a word or phrase or clause which "modifies" or deepens or narrows the meaning of another part of the sentence. The most common modifiers are the one-word adjectives and adverbs which add to the meaning of a noun or verb, like: The girl's outfit proudly proclaimed her Ukrainian heritage.

But often the modifier can be an entire phrase: 

• The play took place in the old Gem Theater. 
• He was waiting for the bus to come. 
• The morning before the party, the dog got sick.

Or the modifier can be an entire clause (with a noun and verb):

• He didn't notice the shocked silence that fell across the room when he wrote his name on the board.
• The more you remember, the more you have to forget.
• --

Some modifiers are "bound"-- that is, they have to be in a particular position, like just before the noun they modify. You know-- The pink dress. (Not --  The dress pink.) These "bound" modifiers are usually single words or short phrases that modify a noun (that is, they are "adjectival," which means "modifies the noun" :). 

Usually, however, modifiers are unbound, especially the phrase and clause ones, and therein lies the problem. An unbound modifier can "legally" be moved around to different parts of the sentence, but what's possible isn't always what you mean. Sometimes being too free-range with modifiers creates the horrific crime of a dangler, where impossible and sometimes painful things happen:

One day she hunted for a moose wearing diamond earrings.

Decisively blocking the knife, her eyes narrowed with purpose.

Ouch.

I have a lot of examples of this kind of mistake, but just for now, let's fix an easy one, adapted from a sentence in a major mag article:

She admitted her enjoyment of the bullying on Facebook last year. 

Many misplaced phrases have to do with time or place-- the "where and when" of the sentence. I see this most often when there are more than one actions in the sentence, as here:

She /admitted /her enjoyment /of the bullying. (Ignore the "on Facebook" and "last year" for a moment so we can focus on the kernel sentence.)

Subject/Verb/direct object/prepositional adjectival phrase.

We usually think of action as being represented by the sentence verb (here, admitted), but actions can also be shown in nouns (participation, bullying). So here there are three actions, all of which took place but perhaps not all at once. 

Actions take place somewhere sometime, and "somewhere sometime" are often important "condition markers" to add to a sentence. (I mean, these words and phrases mark an important condition that changes or specifies something about HOW the action happens.)

But while the position of where/when modifiers might be moveable, the reality isn't: SOMETHING happened last year. SOMETHING happened on Facebook. 

Options:

1. The admission.

She admitted last year...

And/or-

She admitted on Facebook...

2. Her enjoyment.

...  her enjoyment on Facebook...

and/or-

...  her enjoyment last year...

3. The bullying.

...of the bullying on Facebook.

and/or-

...of the bullying last year.

(I know it's not a great sentence because I modified it to protect the guilty. :)

Because the author placed the where/when modifiers at the end of the sentence, right after "bullying", readers will be forced to assume that the bullying took place last year on Facebook. And that might be exactly what happened (although it's not in this case).

But... what if that's not right? What if the bullying took place last year at school, and she enjoyed viewing a video about it last week, and is only admitting it on Facebook?

What happened on Facebook?

What happened last year?

(Some of this info might have been revealed in previous sentences, though not in this case. And still, that's no excuse for imprecision in this sentence. When all it takes is a moment to get it right, make it right. :)

What's a revision which makes those very clear so that the readers won't be confused about what happened when and where?

On Facebook, she admitted her enjoyment of the bullying last year.

or

She admitted on Facebook her enjoyment of the bullying last year.

Sometimes it helps to "bind" a modifier to the modified word so that there's absolutely no question--

She admitted on Facebook her enjoyment of last year's bullying.

==

This is just one sentence and one set of facts, and one point of misplacement. Though I will try, there's no way to identify every possible opportunity for imprecision. 

There are as many options as there are possible permutations of actions and actors and conditions in any sentence. But ONLY ONE IS CORRECT. This isn't about delicate subtext or deliberate ambiguity or debated issues. This is just about placing factual information in the correct place in the sentence. You can get it right as easily as you can get it wrong. But you have to recognize when it's wrong, and then make it right.

Anyhoo, point is: Be sensitive to the meaning you create when you put a modifier somewhere in the sentence. Stop and think about the various interpretations the readers might make of this placement, and whether moving the modifier might make more sense. Time and/or place modifiers are especially tricky.

So if I mean the ADMISSION, not the enjoyment or the bullying, took place on Facebook, I have two easy options (the first being optimal). While we're at it, let's make clear it was the bullying and not the admission that took place last year.

On Facebook, she admitted her enjoyment in the bullying last year.

She admitted on Facebook her enjoyment in last year's bullying.

I have a bunch more examples that I'll post and fix in the future. Usually in order not to shame the writers and editors (who, grumble grumble, should know better), I'll change the words and keep the construction.

This is what passes for giggly gossip in my life. :)

A blast from the past-

The columnist James Kilpatrick used to devote his first column of the year to the many ways you can place and misplace the word "only" as a modifier in a sentence, and used this example to show the difference in meaning:

1. Only John hit Peter in the nose.
2. John hit only Peter in the nose.
3. John hit Peter only in the nose.
4. John only hit Peter in the nose.

(Wouldn't you say "ON the nose"? I would. I'm not sure how deep I would want to hit IN the nose.)

"Almost" and "already" and "just" are other common modifiers that can be moved almost anywhere, but each placement means something different.

Here is a nice British professor who does a great job of showing how to determine what a modifier modifies and how it works in a sentence. 

You can find some good examples of misplaced modifiers at this Guelph University site. 

Why you need to be the smartest person on your team

This appears to be my week to cast a critical eye over the work of others in my field. This time, I was shown some advice given to a writer, and if you know anything about my attitude toward semicolons and present participial phrases, you will understand why this left me weeping in a dark room with smelling salts. Oh, the humanity!

I'm going to change the example to protect the innocent (and the guilty, but that's just a side effect). Here's the advice, in a nutshell.

Semi-Colons join clauses of equal weight. For example a semi-colon can form a compound sentence when used in place of a conjunction:
 
She wanted to chop down the dead oak and plant vegetables in that corner of the yard.
 
Changes to,

She wanted to chop down the dead oak; planting vegetables in that corner of the yard.


Okay, breaking it down. Yes, semicolons can be used to conjoin independent clauses, and when we use them that way, they replace the conjunction. That much is correct. But it's a grammar error to use them "to form compounds" in the way described by these sample sentences. This may have been considered acceptable semicolon use centuries ago, but it has not been the rule in living memory. So, barring certain exceptions involving historical writings, we would never do this today.

Yes, you need to work with an editor to make sure your work is as good as it can be. And it's likely you'll learn new things from your editor. Ditto critique partners, agents, and anyone else who is a member of your team. But you have to know your craft well enough to be able to spot their errors, too.

I was going to break down the sample sentences to explain why these are making me twitchy, but in keeping with the theme of this post, maybe you should do it. There are two glaring problems with the revised sample sentence. Post them in the comments!

Theresa

Question from the mailbag

We do answer questions sent to our email address (edittorrent@gmail.com), and I would have answered this one a couple weeks ago but for an astonishing chain of tech issues chez Theresa. Thanks for the question, and sorry I've been so scarce, but the mercury retrograde smote my communication devices with a fire sword of vengeance.  (Yeah, I watched Game of Thrones. Two computers, three phones, and a truck died, but my cable still worked. *ggg*)

So here's the question from Coleen.

I know PPP’s are dear to your heart, so I have a question regarding them.Recently I found the following two examples in my wip:


1) She hesitated, groping for something to say.


2) She craned her neck, trying to catch a last glimpse of him.


I’ve tried rewriting the first as:


She hesitated.


Or


She groped for something to say.


Or


She hesitated as she groped for something to say.


As an editor, which sounds better?


Is example 2 a cumulative modifier?



Let's take the second part first, because that's the easy one. No, that is not a cumulative modifier. There are two actions in that sentence: craning and trying. The first action serves the purpose of the second action. It's the reason she cranes her neck. So I would replace that with an infinitive phrase:

She craned her neck to catch a last glimpse of him.

I would kill the weak verb "trying" unless the fact of the trying is relevant to the action. Usually, it's only relevant if it results in a failure. That is, if she tries and fails to catch a glimpse of him, then you might want to keep it.

She craned her neck to try to catch a last glimpse of him.

I would expect this sentence to be followed by a reaction to the failure to see him. The first rewritten example might be followed by a reaction to seeing him depart. So it's all in what you want to emphasize, her reaction to his departure or her failure to connect with him one last time.

Okay, so that's the second one, and it's a fairly easy, clean, routine sort of line edit. This kind of edit becomes easier to spot with practice, and it won't take a huge amount of thought to correct. But the first example might require a bit more work. The original is:

She hesitated, groping for something to say.

Now, before I get into my comments, I have to point out that we know nothing about the context. This could be a fleeting moment in a dynamic scene, or it could lead into a long passage of introspection. It might be perfect for the moment and the context -- but in my experience, this kind of sentence usually sounds better in an early draft than in a finished scene. It's a conceptual issue rather than an editing issue.

What's the problem with the concept? Often, this kind of sentence signals that the writer didn't know the character's true response in this moment. The sentence describes the writer's frame of mind during drafting more than the character's frame of mind during the scene action. Often, after some contemplation and revision, the passage containing this kind of sentence will be revised so that the character does have something to say. In the finished scene, if this were followed by a line of dialogue, it would be clear that she had figured out what to say. Again, we don't have a context, but just for example's sake, let's say it is something like--

She hesitated, groping for something to say. "Nigel, I need you to trust me. I can't explain why I was at the bank this afternoon. I made a promise, and telling you more would break that promise."

In this case, it's clear from the dialogue that she can't say  exactly what she wants or needs to say. This makes the first sentence redundant, which means it can be cut.

"But wait," you say. "Maybe we need to indicate a pause before she speaks."

Okay. Maybe so. Do it with an action beat.

She curled the long paper from her straw around and around her index finger. "Nigel, I need you to trust me. I can't explain why I was at the bank this afternoon. I made a promise, and telling you more would break that promise."



The action is futile in that nicely symbolic way that supports the dialogue -- wrapping that paper around her finger is ultimately as meaningless as the words she speaks. The paper is disposable, and so is the explanation she gives him. Her promise to someone else is more important than her need to explain herself to him. And so on. Using a resonant action beat will add subtext to the moment, and it will still indicate the pause we wanted to preserve.


So my advice, with this kind of sentence, is not to tinker with it at all. Get rid of it. Look at what happens around it, and decide if you should replace it with something stronger. But if you really need this sentence -- chances are, you don't, but if you do, replace it with this:


She groped for something to say.


The act of hesitation is implied in the groping.


Good question! Thanks for sending it in!
Theresa

Past Participial Modifiers

Okay, so we might have discussed present participial phrases here a time or two. (cough 19 cough) Now we'll talk about past participial phrases, which are exactly the same as present participial phrases except they use past participles instead of present participles.

Past participle:
evaluated

Present participle:
evaluating

Both forms can be used to conjugate verbs. The present form can be used as a noun (technically, a gerund).  And both can be used as adjectives.

Evaluating the competition, the coach looked worried.
Evaluated for speed, the other team posted record times.

In both examples, the introductory phrases -- adjectives, remember -- modify the nouns they go next to. Because that's what we do with modifiers. We put them next to the words they modify.

Just like a present participial phrase, a past participial phrase can be misplaced:

The other team ate sandwiches, evaluated for speed.

This implies the sandwiches are evaluated for speed. It is a misplaced modifier because it has not been placed next to the word it modifies.

The sandwiches had too much mustard, evaluated for speed.

This is a dangling modifier because it cannot attach to any noun in that sentence. Neither the sandwiches nor the mustard are being evaluated for speed.

And if you think those examples look bizarre and funny, well, they are meant to. But so will every other botched PPP once you learn to spot this kind of error.

Theresa

Solving a Sentence

Some time ago, we looked at a tricky sentence -- evocative and beautiful, but not perfectly balanced -- and I asked for feedback from all of you on how you might edit it. Or if you would edit it. Here's the sentence again:

But it felt so good to be out in the open land, sunlight pouring on her head and arms, bees buzzing in the anemone, the scent of pine tickling her nostrils.

I have to start by saying, again, that this is a good, evocative sentence, but bits of it nag my eyes when I read it. In the original post, I broke the sentence down, or started to, anyway , which I think I ought to re-post here:

But it felt so good to be out in the open land,
(1) sunlight pouring on her head and arms,
(2) bees buzzing in the anemone,
(3) the scent of pine tickling her nostrils.

If you've been reading this blog for any stretch of time, it probably won't surprise to you learn that my eye first snagged on the present participial phrases. (If you aren't familiar with our long rants against PPPs, I'll just suggest you read this post and this post. And maybe this one, which is long but excellent.) Whenever I see a PPP, my eye immediately searches out the sentence for the noun modified by the PPP. In this case, pouring modified sunlight, buzzing modifies bees, ticking modifies scent. So that's all fine.

But something about that sentence still made me pause, so I went to the next check. What did that list of three modify? Open land. And the series lines up in neat order after open land, so that seemed to work just fine.

And yet, I wasn't satisfied. So, if we can see that everything is in the proper order, the next check has us look at the relationships between the parts. And this is where I started to dither, and it's also where I get to touch on another old rant. You see, all those little words that we think of as mostly invisible -- the conjunctions, the relative pronouns, the prepositions, and the like -- are crucial for creating relationships between the "idea" words in a sentence. We could have a list of idea words:

sports car, zoomed, grocery store

And not know the relationship between the parts. There's a world of difference between,

The sports car zoomed to the grocery store.

and

The sports car zoomed through the grocery store.

Right? Changing one word, one tiny little preposition, changes the entire meaning of that sentence because it changes the relationship between the parts. When we skip those relationship words (as when we substitute a semicolon for a conjunction), we might still be getting the right words down, but we sacrifice our ability to control the reader's interpretation of the relationship between the parts.

Sometimes the ambiguity is exactly what we want, as in Alicia's favorite semicolon from Auden:

I thought love would last forever; I was wrong.

He could have said,

I thought love would last forever, AND I was wrong.

Or,

I thought love would last forever, BUT I was wrong.

Either of those would signal a slightly different shade of meaning, but in this case, the semicolon creates an ambiguity that works strongly for the sentence -- because it could be BUT, it could be AND, or it could even be both or neither. The nature of the relationship between those clauses is ambiguous for a purpose, and the ambiguity actually adds meaning to the poem.

But that's another issue, and frankly, it's a rare semicolon that adds more than it detracts. And this sample sentence is not about semicolons, but about the way we glue pieces together with tiny words. And in this case, I think we need some glue. It's not technically necessary, but it would add clarity and precision. Maybe something like,

But it felt so good to be out in the open land with sunlight pouring on her head and arms, bees buzzing in the anemone, and the scent of pine tickling her nostrils.

Adding two words -- the preposition with and the conjunction and -- converts that series into a prepositional phrase with a compound object. Note, too, that now we can get rid of the comma after land, which was previously used to signal the ellipsis. (Ellipsis = missing word = the preposition with)

Or maybe we want to make it adverbial.

But it felt so good to be out in the open land when the sunlight poured on her head and arms, bees buzzed in the anemone, and the scent of pine tickled her nostrils.

Now we have a compound adverbial clause, and notice that we can again eliminate the comma after land. We also can shift the form of the verbs in the clauses to past participles, which always read a little more easily. Of course, now the clause signals something different about the nature of the relationship between the main clause and the dependent clause. Where before we had a preposition indicating something about the nature of the land, now we have a temporal adverb indicating something about the moment in time spent on the land. It's a different relationship between the parts.

There might be other ways to solve that sentence, too, and shore up the relationship between the parts. Or it might be that the author will choose to leave the relationship ambiguous. Worked for Auden, right? In any case, it's a good sentence, and it's a good example of how to tinker with pieces using those little relationship words.

Theresa

Another participle thing

A student sent me this from his revision: "Thought you might get a kick out my original. Don't worry. I fixed it."

Jeremy, bending forward in the doorway, stood straight up and glared at her.

Participles mean simultaneous action. You can't bend and stand straight at the same time.

How to fix? Well, I would probably imply sequence:

Jeremy, who had been bending forward in the doorway, straightened and glared at her.

Not a very good sentence, perhaps, but at least logical!

Alicia who loves students like this!

Marks of the amateur-- starting a list

By popular demand--

This is something I'd never really contemplated before becoming an editor, but every editor I've spoken to since knew immediately what I meant. That is, "What tips you off about a submission that this isn't an experienced writer? What are the marks of the amateur?"

Now I don't mean to be insulting here. These marks don't actually mean that the writer is an amateur, rather that we see these mostly in submissions by newer or inexperienced authors, and so we sort of automatically assume.... well. What's important is to make sure you don't inadvertently trigger our "oh, amateur" assessment.

So anyway, when I was in England (very nice-- I want to live there, seriously, and I've narrowed my future home choice down to Somerset, Wiltshire, or the Yorkshire Dales), I asked my friends who had edited what they would put on this list.

Just to get started, and please add on or ask questions as we go:

1) Improper dialogue formatting. That's first for me, because, uh, if you've been reading for decades and never noticed there's a comma after the quote tag and before the quote mark, and a capital letter starting the quote, and the punctuation INSIDE the quote mark, and a new paragraph with a change in speakers, well, you are apparently not really absorbing writing conventions as you read. That will make the work of editing this rather onerous.

2) A whole lot of introductory participial phrases. One or two or three, sure. Sometimes the meaning of the sentence calls for that. But for whatever reason, whenever there are many intro participles on a first page, the submission proves to be a little amateurish in several ways. Hey, I don't make the rules. I'm just reporting.

3) Lynn said semicolons, but really, I'm okay with the occasional semicolon, even in fiction. (Theresa is sighing-- another round in the Great Semicolon Battle.) But more than one or two semicolons on the first couple pages? Trying too hard to sound mature, are you? And improperly used semicolons? Even worse. It looks like a 10-year-old wearing mascara.

4) Clumsy quote-tagging. Everyone agreed on this. I am the most lenient (yes, really-- I am a positive libertine compared with Some Sticklers Recently in Yorkshire), as I don't mind the infrequent "hissed" or "grumbled" if that's in fact what the speaker sounded like. But the default for tagging your dialogue should be "he/she said" or an action.
He adjusted the rearview mirror. "I think we're being followed."
A bunch of "creative" quote tags-- He intoned, she simpered, he ejaculated (I couldn't help it, sorry!), she expostulated, she exclaimed, he temporized-- indicates to me that the writer is more obsessed with the tags than with the actual thing being said by the speaker.

5) More than a couple homophone mistakes (then/than, here/hear, etc.). This suggests the writer is making too extensive use of spell-check rather than actually READING the sentences.

6) Starting the passage with whatever the latest trend is-- an unattributed line of dialogue, a "cute meet" and (this is important, because a good writer might do this and I'd like it) doing it badly. Yeah, those are so old they should be interred with Milton Berle, but I'm still seeing them, and what they say is, "I don't care about what makes my story unique. I want to sound like all the others."

7) Starting with odd stuff that we might put in the published edition, if we got that far, but shouldn't be in a submission (acknowledgments, dedications, a history lesson). But you know, I do like maps. Go figure.

8) Too many names in the first couple paragraphs. Who is the POV character? That's the name we need.

9) POV shifts on the first page. This presages a book full of headhopping that I really don't want to have to fix. Not to mention this must be a submitter who has not read my many posts and articles (and book!) about POV. :) (I am NOT against multiple POV-- but keep it controlled, and open in one POV and stick with it awhile, okay? So I know you know how to do that? (Again, a good writer might have a good reason for doing this, but I'll know the difference when I see it.)

What else? We'll make a list.

Alicia

Another mark of the amateur

Someone asked for us to list what we see in submissions that we think of (cruelly) as "marks of an amateur."

A lot of introductory participial phrases, that's something that seems to correlate to "new writer" for me.

Here's another. Gushing. I'm thinking not of where, in the query letter, you tell me how wonderful I am (gush away then :), but rather in the story, where the writer amplifies in an overly positive way--

Like:
She was astoundingly beautiful.
The keychain was the most wonderfully perfect gift he'd ever received.
The chair was incredibly richly detailed.
The road was wonderfully pretty.

She was incredibly beautiful.

He was amazingly smart.

The problem is usually in the modifier/modified combination. This doesn't mean you shouldn't use modifiers-- I love 'em-- but be careful of redundant combos:

voraciously hungry

excruciatingly painful

enormously large

But you know, I could probably live with those, because I see that the writer has a vocabulary. But whenever I see "incredibly" in a sentence? Well, it means NOTHING. It's just an intensifier, and more annoying than, well, "more" or "very" (which are, after all, common words that mean exactly what they're meant to mean in the sentence-- intensification). "Incredibly" means 1) nothing, 2) not what you want it to mean in front of that other word. (It means "unbelievably," another empty intensifier.)

You don't want to sound like a pre-teen girl talking about how much she loves one of the Jonas Brothers, do you?

"Incredibly delicious..." This makes me think about how "delicious" used to be enough. You know, when I was growing up, a dish of vanilla ice cream was about as far as our little imaginations could reach. But that wasn't delicious enough, and now this is what you can order (for $7) for dessert: A brownie sundae, with brownie, hot fudge sauce, chocolate chips, marshmallow creme, whipped cream, oh, and vanilla ice cream. Definitely "incredibly delicious".

(Speaking of definitely... a couple semesters ago I had a raft of papers come in that kept using the word "defiantly" -- "I was defiantly glad that Mom and Dad adopted my little brother." "History is defiantly the major for future videogame writers." Whoa. I mean, that led to some interesting ideas... defiantly glad, huh? Mom and Dad punished you for being glad? Or? Then I realized that they'd all misspelled "definitely" the same way-- definately-- and spellcheck had corrected that to "defiantly". :)

Consider a "show" here so you don't have to "tell" so much.

Even raising his hand for the bill set off waves of pain through his shoulder.

He was so grateful he sat down and wrote his mother a thank-you note.

If we "see" the amazingly incredible whatever, we'll believe it more. After all, Helen wasn't termed "amazingly beautiful." Rather she had a face that launched a thousand ships.

Try to show the amazingness in some action or some comparison. Don't gush-- show us.

Alicia

Summing up participles? Other thoughts?

So, because I'm teaching a class on pacing and have gotten to the "prose" part, I think this might be a good opportunity to summarize what we all discussed about PPPs and such.

Jami mentioned that she thought maybe eliminating most of the PPPs could lead to the kind of "fresh, crisp" voice the editors keep asking for. Hmm. Good thought. There is nothing as "crisp" as the declarative SVO sentence, as it succinctly and immediately identifies the causer of the action, the action, and the recipient. Too many unadorned SVO sentences can feel choppy, but this should be the default, as it's so efficient in conveying information.

With that SVO (or just SV, for sentences that describe a condition with non-transitive -- no object-- verbs, like "I wept") as the main clause, you can build other types of sentences. But what's really important, really meaningful, is in a main clause, an independent clause, which can if need be be spun off as its own sentence-- for emphasis, for clarity.

But you can also build on that simple clear statement, adding whatever is needed to deepen the emotion, focus the description, hint at some complication. The kernel of meaning will still be there, however, and the reader will find it if you don't gild up the sentence too much.

I suspect that the more we put in front of the subject, the more arcane the sentence becomes and the more prone to errors. Readers are more likely to be confused at the start of the sentence because they don't have the accumulation of meaning yet. Later in the sentence, an extra phrase or qualifier won't confuse, because the reader knows the main point of the sentence and can put that all into context.

So what should go in front of the main clause? Well, someone-- who was that?-- was mentioning that "inflection" might go first-- that's what tells the reader how to read something. This is really important with dialogue-- we might read the line of speech differently if we know Joan shouted it rather than Pete whispering it.

Something else that might go well at the start of the sentence is some connective referring back, a transition like "Of course" or even a dependent clause like "Although he knew the truth--" That will help provide continuity between sentences (and it's really helpful in smoothing a paragraph break).

A setting or time marker, especially if it's short, can be essential to understanding not just this sentence but how it connects to the rest of the scene: "Across town..." or "The next day..."

And let's say you want to vary the openings of sentences-- do it in a meaningful way, with an element that adds to the reader's understanding and doesn't confuse.

So what else can we say about sentences? What have you found that works? I keep wanting to make a point about sentences and paragraphs-- that if you paragraph well, you'll resist the impulse for the long complicated sentences because you won't think you need to put everything in before the period. So often with these intro PPPs, I kept wondering-- why not do two sentences? When I read these 26-word sentences, with action, reaction, setting, and thought, I wonder, why not make a whole paragraph of this?

How we speak is not a reliable guide to how we should write, but that's something to consider. The reader will naturally consider sentence patterns that replicate the rhythms of conversation (even if the diction is more formal and all the "uhhs" are deleted :) more "authentic" and "real". That's not where you necessarily want to end up, but that might be where you want to start. Does this sound natural? The more conversational our voice is, the deeper our POV, the closer to character voice the narrative is-- the more we want to sound sort of like speech.

What do you all think? What suggestions do you have for revising sentences, especially the start of the sentence?

Alicia

Is the problem...

really that everyone's trying to jam too much into single sentences?

You don't have to do that! But almost all these participial phrase problems are happening (I diagnose) because we're trying to put a paragraph's worth of information into a single sentence.

A sentence should be part of a larger element of meaning called "the paragraph". Paragraphs gather the information, evidence, support, description, action that is around one thought or idea and puts it in a nice indented passage. If it gets more than 5-7 lines, we can even make two paragraphs with some transition at the start of the second paragraph.

But within a paragraph, you can group sentences, and the sentences can be short or long, have one important piece of information or three. If a sentence is too long or too complex or doesn't feel conversational to you or feels out of voice or you can't write around (talk about a long sentence :) a grammatical error or you think you didn't get something conveyed right, just try breaking it into two. For example:
Sometimes a sentence is too long or too complex or doesn't feel conversational to you or feels out of voice or you can't write around (talk about a long sentence :) a grammatical error or you think you didn't get something conveyed right. So just try breaking it into two.

So everyone go back to the offending PPP sentence and try this:
PPP in one sentence (now a sentence, not a phrase, natch), and add whatever emotion, action, subject, information will help it be a more meaningful sentence.
Main clause in another sentence, and add, etc.

What have you lost? Is one element too vague, too wispy to justify a sentence? What can you do to make it more important? Don't forget voice additives and transitions. A "Well," or "In fact," can do a lot to make a shorter sentence feel more important as a conclusion of sorts.

But I really think this is the diagnosis-- some of these sentences should be TWO sentences. See if that's true for you.
Alicia


Alicia

Question about PPPs

Okay, whether we've persuaded you or not, I think everyone agrees that in published novels, introductory present participial phrases are rather rare. So why is this? (And don't blame editors. ) What would you say PPPs do that is wrong, or what doesn't it do that's right (and I'm sorry I can't come up with a better way to say that :)?

In most of the examples you all have come up with, I respond with something that indicates that I think PPPs too often summarize something important, that should be in a sentence or two of its own.

But what else? What could be the problem with PPPs, and I mean the legal ones, not just the danglers.

Alicia

My answers to comments get so long, might as well keep building up the "Theresa owes me another drink" credits

Jami G said:
Considering everything that had happened, she supposed blah,blah,blah

I don't know about other people, but I actually say "Considering..." at the beginning of sentences sometimes. If I "fix" it to "When she considered...", it sounds more formal. What's your take on this example?

Well, I'm agnostic on it. Sounds okay. the "everything that had happened" bothers me more than the participle, actually.

The problem is, you're trying to find some example of when a PPP can work. Okay. But that's still likely to be a boring sentence. Generic. Vague. Sorry, but go for meaning first. (I know you just wanted to come up with an example, but ...) My point here is, there is very little in that construction that is likely to aid in imbedding more meaning or interest or involvement into a sentence. Sometimes it's going to be inoffensive. Sometimes it's going to be okay. Sometimes it might even be right. But will it be powerful? Important? Thoughtful? Maybe you can make it so. But what I'm saying is-- make the thought worth a sentence, and then find the best way of conveying that thought AND its connections to what comes before and after. If that happens to be a PPP, go for it. But for whatever reason, PPPs are usually not very useful and meaningful sentence openings. I don't know why, though I'm sure I can speculate and come up with something that sounds momentarily significant. (g)

So looking at the "considering" sentence, well, maybe it's okay, though I will point out, even if you completed the sentence, it's likely to be pretty generic. Me-- and I always go overboard with introspection, I know-- I'd probably go ahead and show her considering. "She considered AB and C. The memory of C made her wince. She supposed she was lucky she'd only been sentenced to two years."

Or-- "With A, B, and C, she supposed she was lucky..."

But I guess if it's important enough to have in the story, it's important enough to explain. I'm not good at summary, and I think it's kind of the enemy of verisimilitude. We might think in summary, but I don't think we "consider" in summary.

Anyway, yeah, that would be an okay sentence. I just hope that we're all shooting for better than "okay" here. :)

Alicia

More PPP

Joan Mora said...Thanks Alicia,

You got me--I do obsess over each word.

Here's a before and after. The first one trips over itself. I didn't change the ending because the grandmother's spirit is the element I'd like to highlight. (If you didn't mean for me to copy a sentence here--apologies!)

Crossing the threshold, a powerful force struck Julianne, as though she were entering a different time, one in which her grandmother’s indelible spirit lived on.

Julianne maneuvered the threshold as though she entered a different time period, one in which her grandmother’s indelible spirit lived on.

I'd go with the progressive-- as though she were entering-- because entering could well be a progressive move, not a single discrete move.

You see why "crossing the threshold" is a dangling participle? The Powerful Force isn't crossing the threshold. So that was a great catch, to put Julianne as the subject of the action.

But what's wrong with "cross"? Maneuvered kind of implies that she's moving the threshold around rather than going through it. Negotiated? Moved through? But crossed is a good concise verb for thresholds.

Now IS she entering a different time period? "As though" means it only seems that way. (See, I'm still locked into what the threshold is like. Maybe it is a way to another dimension. :)

This is a bit clunky (one in which) for an already longish sentence:
one in which her grandmother’s indelible spirit lived on.
How about "where her grandmother's...."?

Just a thought.

This doesn't actually apply to yours because yours isn't that complex a sentence, but I want to note it while I'm thinking of it. With really long, complicated sentences, I think often we're trying to make the sentence do the work of a paragraph. The paragraph, not the sentence, explores an idea and its effects or examples or support or whatever. Often I think writers try to do that all in one sentence. You don't have to. The reader will assume (I hope with justification) that everything in a paragraph belongs together, supports something central. So don't make sentences bear too much weight, even-- or especially-- in a synopsis. Stop thinking in terms of sentences. Sentences' main role is to be part of a paragraph. :)

Alicia

Some PPP examples donated by brave commenters

Jami G said: Okay, I found this sentence that has an opening *ing phrase. My first stupid question is: Is this a PPP? It seems like it is, but it "feels" different than the others I've been trying to fix. My second question is (assuming it is a PPP): How could I fix this without ruining the rhythm or impact of the sentence?

Hating how he’d made her feel, she hoped her knees wouldn’t buckle and betray her weakness.

Yes, you're right, it's a PPP. "Hating" is the participle. Why does it feel different? Well, "hating" is a static verb, about a feeling, not action, and feeling verbs usually aren't great in PPPs (which are about ACTION, and there's no action in a feeling). Also, remember what Theresa said about temporary -- PPPs are about moments, not conditions. In that moment, that very moment that Action 1 is taking place, Action 2 is taking place-- that's the purpose of the PPP. Does she only hate the way he makes her feel in the very same moment she's hoping her knees wouldn't buckle? Or does she hate this for a longer time than that?

This also feels like a cause/effect thread. He makes her feel X. She hates it. Because she feels this way, and because she hates it, she's afraid her knees might buckle, betraying her weakness.

Notice that I put the participle at the end there, as I see the simultaneity as being Knees buckling will betray her weakness. That is, up to that, the action (emotional action?) seems sequential.

This doesn't all have to be in one sentence. I am learning I like shorter sentences than many do-- that doesn't mean I'm right, but I'd probably put that in two sentences. Why? Hmm. Because I think her hating the way he makes her feel is the important thing, so why relegate it to a phrase? But a SVO would be really clunky:

(THIS IS BAD!) Hating the way he made her feel (long subject, clunky!) made (verb) her fear that her knees would buckle and betray her weakness (long object-- what did this make?)

So that's terrible. :)

How about:
She hated the way he made her feel. Now that he was looking at her (whatever way, whatever made her feel that way-- anyway, I'd put something in there from HIM), she hoped her knees wouldn't buckle and betray her weakness.

Why not betraying as I suggested above? I think because it wouldn't be clear what the phrase modified. Let's look at the poss-es:

...she hoped her knees wouldn't buckle, betraying her weakness.

What would betray her weakness? She and her hoping? Or her knees buckling? "Betraying" is at the end of the sentence, so it probably modifies "the buckling of her knees," but because that noun "buckling" doesn't actually appear, rather the verb "wouldn't buckle", and participles are adjectives and modify nouns, not verbs.... sigh. I think I'd just punt and do it with an "and" and a multiple verb (buckle and betray, though really, it's the knees buckling, not the knees themselves, that betray her... this is HARD!! Jami, you're so MEAN to make me have to think on a weekend!!).

Anyway, a participle shouldn't modify a noun that isn't really there-- the reader shouldn't have to invent a noun for the participle to work off (knees buckling, buckling of the knees), so my initial impulse to have a trailing participle doesn't stand up to analysis. :) You're right-- "And" works better to join those two things.

But do think about what's most important here-- the longer term hate, or the momentary hope? The more important element should be in a main clause if possible. If both are important, do two independent clauses-- a compound sentence, or two sentences. You are telling the reader what's important by the choices you make.



Murphy says:
Okay, I did tell you that when I start thinking - it’s never good, right?:D

So um, here’s a goodie:

Moving quickly to steady her feet on the floor, while at the same time making sure that those faltering steps increased the distance between them, she nervously kept an eye on his doubled over profile.

Hmmm, my reasoning behind writing this sentence this way? Well, for starters, this is the third paragraph in a block of an action scene. When you read it back collectively it flows - but I do have to admit that if I took it out of that context I would want to rewrite it like:

She moved quickly to steady her feet on the floor. She was careful to use these faltering steps to her advantage and increase the distance between them while she nervously kept an eye on his doubled over profile.

I have no better excuse other than to say - the action is fluid even though the positioning of the characters has changed - so I did want to get the shift in the physical changes in the scene without disrupting the forward motion of the action. Crap. I do these things without thinking about them - is this wrong? I mean do you always edit these out? It’s not like I can’t do so myself, but in the few - (there were only two beginning ppps in five chapter of my current WIP) so it isn’t like I dump them in with flagrant abandon or anything – it’s just that sometimes it seems to work with the rhythm.

Signed Murphy, who can’t seem to stay off the hot seat!;)

Well, a friend of mine used to talk about "Dolly Parton sentences"-- top-heavy. :) That's when the introductory elements are a lot "heavier" or longer than the main clause. I think there's a purpose for that, a "feel" for that-- comic effect, for one (the anticlimax of the main clause can be humorous), and also maybe to convey a peltering, frantic action.

But you are burying the main clause, and how important the main clause is in that context, I don't know. But by the time we get to the main clause (which is usually the most important action), we've gotten tangled up. Here's how I'd edit, and keep in mind I don't have the context, and also that I go with a trailing adjective phrase (careful), but for some reason, I felt like all the action in one sentence, and the conclusion in another for emphasis maybe:

She moved quickly to steady her feet on the floor, careful to use these faltering steps to her advantage and increase the distance between them. All the while, she nervously kept an eye on his doubled(hyphen here, btw-- compound adjective before a noun)over profile.

I was going with a simple "She" opening in the last sentence, but I think you're right that "while" is important as there IS simultaneity. It's just the sentence gets too complicated (for me) when you have three major elements/actions in one. So the physical action in one, and the perceptive (noticing) action in the last. A sentence by itself will mean, of course, that THAT is the essential thing in the paragraph. Don't know if it is.

(Also, I don't get that "doubled-over profile". I guess to me "profile" is facial, and if his face is doubled over, well, that sounds scary. Do you mean his body is doubled over? I don't have any wise thoughts about this, but "doubled-over profile" makes me think of Mr. Rubber Face -- I saw him in a bawdy show in Dawson City, Yukon, many years ago, and had nightmares for years about this man who could make his mouth retract so much his nose almost touched his chin. :)

With long sentences, I try to read aloud, and if I can't get all the words out in one breath, I try to trim or break. The reader kind of instinctively might feel a sentence is too long if she senses she couldn't say it in one breath. (Faulkner would disagree, of course. :)

I wonder if "rhythm and flow" matter less to me than meaning, or if I'm just relying on intuition to get that right in the end? I don't know. I always have thought that rhythm is really important to me. I think I think (that's kind of cute-- thinking I think :) that meaning leads to rhythm, and if you get the meaning right, the rhythm will come.

Alicia

Sentence openings-- beyond words

In the wake of Theresa's provocative exercise about checking published work for PPPs (present participial phrases, Murphy asks:
...Uh oh, I was just thinking ( and that’s never good) what’s Alicia’s opinion on this? I mean, if she holds to her position that everything in grammar is there to serve a purpose - why can’t the purpose of PPPs be to switch up the monotony - or maybe infuse the prose with something a little different? That’s primarily why I do it.
Theresa and I generally agree, but we REALLY agree on this. I mean, we've had heated discussions that peter out because there's nothing to discuss and nothing to get heated about. We agree. PPPs, especially at the start of a sentence, are seldom eloquent and quite often ungrammatical, and we agree that starting many sentences with a PPP is something we see mostly in unsophisticated writers. (We keep blogging about this very subject, in fact.)

So we agree. We more than agree. We-- this is God's honest truth-- send each other examples of danglers we find in submissions. I know, I know. But really, "Chasing his tail, I called for Rover," THAT is a great joke. I mean, David Letterman should have a segment of Top Ten Dangling Participles.

But we also agree that even if you avoid dangling your participles (and really, the more participial phrases you have, the more likely you'll dangle many of them), PPPs are problems, not always, but often, and they become more of a problem when they're in a phrase, and even more when they're in an introductory phrase. (Much discussion from both of us in the participle thread here.)

So, anyway.
I mean, if she holds to her position that everything in grammar is there to serve a purpose - why can’t the purpose of PPPs be to switch up the monotony - or maybe infuse the prose with something a little different?

Well, the desire for that to be the purpose doesn't make it so. Maybe I want the purpose of my dishwasher to be washing clothes... but its actual purpose is washing dishes. (You know, I actually tried to make the purpose of "laundry detergent" to be "substituting for the dishwashing detergent I forgot to pick up at the grocery," and it was a disaster. I don't understand why this perfectly sensible substitute caused suds to spill out of the dishwasher and cover the entire kitchen floor a foot deep. Boy, what a mess.)

The purpose of the participle is to modify a noun with an action simultaneous to the action the noun is performing. (There are other parts of speech that end in -ing, btw-- a gerund is an verb-ing word that takes the role of a noun in a sentence-- Failing is my biggest fear. Getting lost is often the start of adventure.) That's it. The purpose is not to start a sentence any more than the purpose of a noun is to start a sentence. Sometimes sentences start that way, but almost any part of speech or syntactical element can start a sentence in English-- the English sentence is quite flexible.

But let's get real here. We all try to vary the openings of our sentences. No one wants to have six sentences in a row starting the same way. Sentence variety is a perfectly good goal. (I am going to be all pedantic and say that we should aim at making meaningful sentences that help the reader fully experience the action, and if we do that, our sentences will have plenty of variety. But I do notice that sometimes we have five sentences in a row starting with "he," and that's when we look for another way to open one or two of them.)

That is a valid aim. But the aim is not "varying sentence openings," really, is it? It's "making the passage read well," and how to accomplish that will depend on the passage purpose, your voice, the pacing, where you are in the scene (I bet at the end of a scene, your sentences might be shorter or longer), all sorts of things.

And sentences are rhythmic and euphonious not in isolation, but in connection-- within the paragraph. And you know, just as where the paragraph is in the scene matters, so does where the sentence is in the paragraph. The first sentence in a paragraph might open differently-- more decisively, perhaps, or with a "time transition" like "Two weeks ago--" from later sentences.

(I must pause to point out that "euphonious" is a very un-euphonious word. It's like "abbreviation" and "monosyllable"-- they are not what they mean. :)

I must admit that I think sportswriters are often the best journalistic stylists out there, more conscious of voice and effect than the often leaden political writers. So I read Sports Illustrated not just for the sports news, but for the often powerful writing. Here's an opening from a recent article about Marc Buoniconti, who was paralyzed in a college game (yes, he's Nick's son):

Henry Mull was 13 years old then, poor and sports-mad and hardly intrigued by the long view. Who is at 13? So, no, he never thought about the odd ways lives can meld—not in the hours before his neck got snapped, and certainly not in the hours after. Strangers sliced the shoulder pads and helmet off the Middleton Junior High quarterback and sped him through the streets of Tampa to the hospital, where more strangers shaved his head, their voices and faces and hands fluttering while he lay terrified. His mother hadn't arrived yet. "Am I going to play ball again?" he asked. Now someone was pressing a metallic device to his head, now eight grim-faced people were holding down his arms and legs. Whatever anesthetic they used, it didn't take. The boy screamed when they screwed the first four-inch bolt into one side of his skull, just above the ear. He kept it up as they twisted in the second, screaming all the way into blackness.


Now I just chose that story because it's online so I didn't have to type it in. But like so many SI articles, this article has an elegant but vivid opening. See how concrete it is, the precision and yet relevance of the details (four-inch bolt, just above ear). Look at the powerful but familiar verbs: screwed, twisted. There are even some participles (though I don't think any participial phrases): screaming, fluttering (notice those are active, none of that being and having deadwood). (No, "pressing" doesn't count, in my estimation, because it's -- with "was"-- the progressive form of the verb, and doesn't count as a participle-- it's not a modifier but part of the verb. Not all -ing words are participles, only the adjectival ones.)

But notice that most of the sentences start with the subject and proceed pretty quickly to the predicate (verb):

Henry Mull was
Strangers sliced
His mother hadn't arrived
The boy screamed
He kept it up

Also notice most of those use transitive verbs which transfer the action to an object:
Strangers (subject) sliced (verb) the shoulder pads and helmet (direct objects) off

Why is that important? Well, first, the SVO is the basic sentence form in English (not in all languages). Also transitive verbs are usually action verbs, and action verbs, natch, make the passage feel more active. And direct objects keep the sentence concrete-- this is not purposeless action, what this subject is doing, but purposeful-- the action is being done to something.

What other openings are there?
Two sentences have transitions before the SVO-- very efficient:
So, no, he never thought
Now someone was pressing

These are efficient transitions because in a single word, they each convey a connection to a previous sentence. "So" makes a causal connection -- Because he is only 13, he doesn't think about this.
"Now" makes a time connection. The previous sentence was "then," before, and this is "now."

Let me point out that these single-word transitions serve to mask the opening without hiding it, so if you have too many "he" openings, this might be a good variation. :)

Then there are two questions:
Who is at 13?
"Am I going to play ball again?"
(I note that this ends with the quote tag he asked. The author could have started with that, and it would then be a standard SVO construction. He asked, "Am I going to play ball again?" The quote then is the direct object. You see how that simple, completely conventional switch, quote tag last, varies the opening by putting the object first-- and this is an object that starts with a verb. Elegant!)

Then there's one that is a compound sentence (two independent clauses), but the first clause has a OSV construction (whatever anesthetic is the object of they used). (And to complicate, the entire first clause is the antecedent to that pronoun "it".)
Whatever anesthetic they used, it didn't take.

So half of the sentences start with the subject. I bet you didn't read that paragraph and think, "All those sentences start the same!" That's because they don't.
Name
Someone else, plural
Someone else
The boy (not name)
Pronoun

So three sentences start with Henry, but not the word Henry. Name, descriptor, pronoun.

Two sentences start with transition words before the subject.

Two start with question markers (the relative pronoun-- who, and notice this gives a SVO construction for the question-- and the inverted verb-subject order -- Am I).

Not an intro participial phrase in there. (Or a trailing one, for that matter.) There's not even a prepositional opening, though there could be (prepositions usually indicate some time or space positioning): Just above his ear, they screwed in a four-inch bolt.

And there are no introductory dependent clauses, though again there could be:
When they screwed the first four-inch bolt into one side of his skull, just above the ear, the boy screamed.

So... does this paragraph work, I guess is the first question. I think it does, but what do you think?

And if so, why does it work? Why does the emphasis on SVO construction work?

I think that it's meant to be immediate, concrete, visual, vivid, experiential. The passage is meant to put the reader right there in the scene. So the sentence openings aren't cluttered with extraneous detail or -- this is important-- minor elements or actions. The openings are forceful and focused, because the purpose of the paragraph is to get the reader into the action.

The virtue of the SVO construction is its efficiency in transmitting the experience and action. There's no distraction from that.

Other elements opening a sentence have many uses, but they can DISTRACT from the conveyance of that simple action/experience. That's fine... for some situations. For some purposes. For some passages. For some voices.
When?

Well, here's an excerpt from the wonderful Lemony Snicket novel A Series of Unfortunate Events #1: The Bad Beginning:

Their misfortune began one day at Briny Beach. The three Baudelaire children lived with their parents in an enormous mansion at the heart of a dirty and busy city, and occasionally their parents gave them permission to take a rickety trolley-the word "rickety," you probably know, here means "unsteady" or "likely to collapse"-alone to the seashore, where they would spend the day as a sort of vacation as long as they were home for dinner. This particular morning it was gray and cloudy, which didn't bother the Baudelaire youngsters one bit. When it was hot and sunny, Briny Beach was crowded with tourists and it was impossible to find a good place to lay one's blanket. On gray and cloudy days, the Baudelaires had the beach to themselves to do what they liked.

So why would he start the paragraph with declarative (though hardly simple) sentences? And then end with three sentences that start with introductory phrases and clauses (the last two properly followed by a comma, please note :)? None of these are participial phrases- one (When) is a dependent clause, and the other two are prepositional phrases (the This particular phrase has the implied "on"-- On this particular day).

Introductory elements like these "qualify"-- they impose or explain some condition usually. Now often they will also work in the middle or the end of the sentence (as I said, the English sentence is flexible), but we tend to put things first, before the main clause, when we want the reader to have that sense BEFORE reading the main action of the sentence. So if you want the reader to have the "gray and cloudy day" in mind first, you put it first. Look how automatically I put "if" clauses first-- "If you want the reader...." That's because usually (certainly not always) the main clause is so circumscribed by the condition, you need the condition first to get the right "feel" of the constriction.

Here's another:
A man begins dying at the moment of his birth. Most people live in denial of Death’s patient courtship until, late in life and deep in sickness, they become aware of him sitting bedside.
Eventually, Mitchell Rafferty would be able to cite the minute that he began to recognize the inevitability of his death: Monday, May 14, 11:43 in the morning–three weeks short of his twenty-eighth birthday.
Until then, he had rarely thought of dying. A born optimist, charmed by nature’s beauty and amused by humanity, he had no cause or inclination to wonder when and how his mortality would be proven.
When the call came, he was on his knees.
The Husband by Dean Koontz

Again, there are no PPPs. The blue-fonted phrases charmed by nature’s beauty and amused by humanity are past participial phrases, not present. They are descriptors, amplifying what is meant by "a born optimist".

Here's another, from A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini:
It was true. Mariam didn't remember. And though she would live the first fifteen years of her life within walking distance of Herat, Mariam would never see this storied tree. She would never see the famous minarets up close, and she would never pick fruit from Herat's orchards or stroll in its fields of wheat. But whenever Jalil talked like this, Mariam would listen with enchantment. She would admire Jalil for his vast and worldly knowledge. She would quiver with pride to have a father who knew such things.

Here, there are two dependent clauses here. No participial phrases.

Finally! I'm telling you, I have scanned lots of excerpts, chosen at random (I looked at Dickens and Faulkner too, just to get a sense of earlier novels, and found the same thing) and this is the FIRST introductory participial phrase I've seen, from A Question of Blood by Ian Rankin:
"Marty!" His girlfriend's snarl. "Be seeing you, Shiv." Still grinning, he walked backwards for a few paces, then turned away. Siobhan had headed straight back over to St. Leonard's to reacquaint herself with his file. An hour later, the switchboard had put through a call. It was him, phoning from a bar. She'd put the receiver down. Ten minutes later, he'd called again . . . and then another ten after that.

That's it-- "Still grinning."

What does that tell you? It tells me that in published works, introductory participial phrases are NOT a common way of starting a sentence-- which is just what Theresa's exercise showed.

How about trying this-- take a couple pages of a book you like, and highlight every introductory element, even the one word ones. And think about why the element is in the sentence, and why it's at the beginning-- what additional meaning does that placement create?

But don't stop there. Keep note of the many ways you can start a sentence. But the point isn't to vary a sentence for the sake of variation. If you look for the best way to convey the meaning of the sentence, you'll find the best way to order the sentence elements. It helps to know lots of different possibilities, to hear those options in your head as you write and revise. But don't strew them around. Consider the purpose of the sentence, its placement in the paragraph. (I notice that often the paragraphs above break into two parts, the first half with intro elements and the second half without or vice versa. That is, the same sentence might be ordered differently in a different part of the paragraph-- if it's introducing something, or making a conclusion, you might order it differently.)

The way we convey meaning in English is primarily through sentence order (and paragraph order, I think). So don't give up that tool by arbitrarily choosing sentence order on the basis of something other than meaning. Make the meaning happen, and I'll bet that your sentences will sound just fine.

(But I can't help but point out that introductory participial phrases seldom add much meaning. If they do, however, good! :)

So how about some examples of sentence openings that are meaningful-- and why you put this element there and that here.

Alicia

Five Minutes Could Change Your Style Forever

I know we nag a bit about present participial phrases. I was thinking about this last night, and it dawned on me that people might not understand that this isn't just some personal peccadillo.

So here's a quick exercise for everyone to do. It will take less than five minutes, and the results might surprise you.

Step 1.
Go to your bookcase. Take down a book you love, something that really spoke to you when you read it the first time. Open to a random page.

Step 2.
Count the sentences on that page.

Step 3.
Count the present participial phrases. (Skip past progressive verb tenses and gerunds. We're just looking for the dreaded PPP here.)

That's it. 1, 2, 3. Do the results surprise you?

Share your numbers in the comments. I'll get the ball rolling here. In my purse, I have Don't Bargain With the Devil by Sabrina Jeffries, an historical romance author of no small reputation.

I opened randomly to page 198.
Sentences: 27 (including partials from previous and next page)
PPPs: 1

Second spin of the wheel, this time on page 108.
Sentences: 28
PPPs: 0

Your turn!
Theresa

The Last Piece of Theory on Present Participial Phrases

You're probably sick to death of listening to all the talk about the routine abuse of present participial phrases. Trust me, it could be worse. If we posted about this every time we rejected a sub for having too many of these errors, we'd have to rename the blog -ingtorrent.

But in all our talk about these pesky phrases, it occurs to me that we've never given you the final piece of theory. We explained that these phrases are adjective phrases. We talked about the nature of modifiers and how present participial phrases sometimes indicated weakness in the sentence's main clause. And, most recently, Alicia talked about using present participial phrases to signal concurrent actions.

Maybe you've already read these posts and drawn the conclusion I'm about to present. But just in case, and just so we're all clear on how these different bits of advice and theory work together, let's take a look at why these phrases must be concurrent and relevant to the main clause.

In the simple sentence,

The orange cat leaped onto the windowsill

we can all see that orange modifies cat. The cat's orange quality exists at the moment of leaping. In fact, we can assume the cat is orange at all times, barring unfortunate accidents with dye pots. Easy enough so far. But what happens when we replace that simple adjective with a present participle used as an adjective?

The hissing cat leaped onto the windowsill.

The act of hissing still describes the cat, and the act of hissing is still concurrent with the main action verb. Hissing is a state of being that exists during the totality of the leap. Hissing is not a discrete action all on its own. Or, I should say, it's not presented as such. If it were, it would be presented differently, perhaps,

The cat hissed and leaped onto the windowsill.

Then we would be describing a compound action (hissed and leaped) instead of describing a state of being (hissing) of a noun (cat) at the moment an action (leaped) occurs.

You with me so far? Verbs are actions. Adjectives describe qualities or states of being of a noun. And -- this is the main point -- the description of the noun must be simultaneous with the action. If the hissing and leaping occurred in sequence, one first and then the next, you would have to separate them in the sentence, perhaps with an adverb,

The cat hissed and then leaped onto the windowsill.

(Then is an adverb modifying leaped.)

Or you might shift the hissing into an adverb phrase,

After hissing at the dog, the cat leaped onto the windowsill.
While hissing at the dog, the cat leaped onto the windowsill.

These phrases are adverbial in nature because they describe the time elements involved with the actions. They don't qualify the essential nature of the cat. They qualify the timeline. Because adverbs modify verbs, right? Verbs usually lay out the timeline for prose actions, so any time you need to clarify sequencing, you might need adverbs or adverb phrases. And these adverb phrases are not the same as,

Hissing at the dog, the cat leaped onto the windowsill.

Because this doesn't tell us diddly-squat about the sequencing. All we've done in this sentence is elaborate on an adjective (which modifies a noun, not a verb). (Forgive me if this sounds like harping. I'm trying to make this as clear as I can, and this seems to require some repetition of concepts.)

Remember that in the sentence,

The hissing cat leaped onto the windowsill.

the adjective hissing modified the noun cat. All we have done here is add a prepositional phrase to provide more information about the hissing. It's not just any hissing. It's hissing at a dog. But it still describes the essential nature of the cat.

The hissing at the dog cat leaped onto the windowsill.

This sentence is structurally awkward for a whole lot of reasons we won't get into here. But leaving aside all that awkwardness (and the punctuation issue, also a separate matter), the point is that hissing still modifies cat, and at the dog still modifies hissing, and modifiers still go next to the words they modify. You could use punctuation to get around the awkwardness,

The hissing-at-the-dog cat leaped onto the windowsill.

Or you could shift the phrase into an introductory position,

Hissing at the dog, the cat leaped onto the windowsill.

The cat's hissing-at-the-dog nature exists at the moment of the leap. And this is why present participial phrases, which are adjectival in nature, are simultaneous with the main actions of the sentence.

When Alicia was talking about causal and other connections between the present participial phrase and the main verb, I think she was mainly trying to make a point about relevance. We could describe the cat in lots of different ways.

Staring with its blue eyes and hissing at the dog, the cat leaped onto the windowsill.

Now there's a craptastic phrase for you. I had to use one that talked about what the cat is doing with its eyes, because these are generally weak phrases, far less meaningful than dynamic actions like hissing and leaping. Using less meaningful (or even irrelevant) phrases will dilute the impact of the sentence. The cat may very well have staring blue eyes for the duration of the leap. But so what? The fact that it's eyes are blue doesn't give us important information about the actions underway. And the staring -- well, anyone who has been around a cat knows they are champion starers. They stare because they're bored, content, hungry, etc., etc. But hissing only happens in response to a threat, so hissing gives us a more clear description of the cat's state of being at the moment of the jump.

Do we all understand this? Any questions? Got any sample sentences with participial phrases you want us to tackle? Post them in the comments if you do.

Theresa,
tempted to bore us further with another similar post on past participial phrases

Participles redux

Now I'm going to quote Theresa again-- There are three things that can happen with participial phrases, and two of them are bad, so play the odds and avoid them when you can.

I know why writers use participles at the beginning of sentences, and it has very little to do with the actual function of participles (to show simultaneity of action). Writers do this because they want to vary the front of sentence-- They don't want every sentence to begin with the subject noun.

Okay, that's a laudable aim. But the problem is, starting a sentence is only accidentally a major function of a participial phrase, and yet many writers make it the ONLY function. So they use it in all sorts of sentences where simultaneity of action isn't a factor or shouldn't be emphasized. They don't notice what's important about the sentence and over-emphasize (or invent) something just so they can bury the real sentence lead with a participle.

(At some point, I'll suggest other ways to open sentences. At this point, just let me say that a participle opener is often a mark of unsophistication, yes, more so than a simple subject opening.)

Here are the sorts of issues I'm seeing in submissions which rely too much on what "sounds" to me like a clumsy, clunky opening.

1) Participles can often be dangling modifiers. In fact, if you use a lot of opening participial phrases, I bet half of them are dangling. That's because, frankly, if you don't understand your sentence-- what the central idea or action is, who's doing what-- you probably aren't aware of what the subject is. Quick rule (and this is not MY rule, though it would be if I were the one making the rules-- it's a good rule :)-- The committer of the action in the participle should be the subject of the following main clause.
Here's a dangling modifier:
Taking hold of him like a vise, he couldn't stop the rising fear.
Now it's possible that he is taking hold of himself like a vise, I guess. But that's not what the author meant. The author meant the FEAR was taking hold of him. So say so.
The fear took hold of him like a vise.
or if you want to get his inability to stop in there:
He couldn't stop the fear from taking hold of him like a vise. (The "from" isn't needed-- I think it just sounded better at that moment.)
If you want to use participial phrases, expect that you're going to dangle some of them. So go back and check! Familiarize yourself with the rules about dangling modifiers (not all danglers are participles, of course). Check every single sentence opening. If you don't find all the danglers, you can bet the editor will.

2. "Participle" means simultaneous or near-simultaneous actions. So you should be considering this type of construction only if two actions are happening at the same time (or so close in time it seems simultaneous or sequential) AND if they belong together-- committed by the same person, first off! And mere simultaneity probably isn't sufficient reason to put them together in one sentence. What works? A cause-and-effect relationship, maybe:
Surveying the fruit, she chose a peach.
Tapping on the vault, she decided she could break in.
(I almost never use intro participles, so you can see I'm clumsy! Maybe you can do better-- good causal participles.)
Taking a deep breath, he turned the doorknob.
Picking up his pen, he prepared to sign his life away.
Breathing deeply, she swung the bat around.
Closing his eyes, he clicked his heels together, and he vanished. (Comma and new clause-- why? Because the vanishing happens after-- maybe one sequential action works, but two are pushing if in the same clause.)

3. For some reason, body parts make for the worst participles, or at least the most laughable results.
Beating hard, he almost lost heart.
Striding forward, his footsteps echoed in the corridor.

Body parts aren't characters. Check. Always check. Always check.

4. Even "legal" participles can be wrong because two actions don't work together. Theresa found a terrific one (yes, we do collect these!):
Running down the stairs, she tied her shoes.
Just because two actions have some connection -- both involving shoes?-- and occur in the same basic timeframe doesn't mean this is the right construction.
She tied her shoes and ran down the stairs. What's wrong with that? It starts with "she"? That is hardly the worst thing that can happen with a sentence. (Theresa and I adding it to our "perverted participle" list as we chortle wickedly-- that's much, much worse.) It's a perfectly good sentence, where the order of words replicates the order of action. Good.

Here's one where there's no reason shown they should be linked:
Gazing at her, he took the change.
Why are you putting those two things together? If you mean that because he couldn't stop gazing at her, he missed some of the change and sent a penny rolling off the counter into the Reese's Pieces box, SAY SO. If you are alleging a connection, show it.

5. Participles are ACTIONS. There's no reason to create a participle and invite all the problems that come along if there aren't two actions involved. So rethink any intro phrase that starts with "being" or "having" or other static verbals, like:
Being a transit cop, Johnny was suspicious of soccer fans.
(Okay, FOOTBALL fans, and I'll go with that because of the US team's amazing victory over Spain yesterday.)

That works just fine as:
As a transit cop, Johnny was suspicious of football fans.

The reverse (static -- stative or reflexive-- verb in the main clause) is not a lot better:
Regarding her closely, he had beautiful blue eyes.
I presume he ALWAYS has blue eyes, and I bet they're usually beautiful, but this construction indicates that this is only true when he's regarding her.

What's a static verb? Verbs that aren't about action. So feeling and thinking and wondering and loving and having and being-- those are not good in a participial phrase or in a main clause coupled with a participial phrase. If you don't have two actions, consider whether a participial construction is really your best bet.

Sticking two events in the same sentence doesn't mean they are linked. I can't decide whether this is laziness ("I don't want to do the work of writing sentences that actually show connections") or a misunderstanding of the purpose of a sentence. In a good sentence, all the elements in the sentence are there because they belong together. Together they create more meaning than when they are separated because their linkage in the sentence implies or creates a connection-- and if the connection doesn't add to the meaning, consider if they should be in the same sentence.

Varying the sentence opening, making a different rhythm-- those are not sufficient reasons to put elements in the same sentence. And there are more interesting and thoughtful ways to show a connection than a participle (usually). Find the connection, and find the way to build the sentence that amplifies and deepens that connection. To tell you the truth, that seldom is going to involve an intro participial phrase, which is why we say that the intro participial phrase is often a sign that a writer lacks sophistication. If you've been relying on that, just be aware. It's not a mark of authority. (Sometimes it works, of course. You should be able to tell when it works.)

What is voice? In part, on the sentence level, it's about making sentences mean what you want them to mean-- but also maybe mean even more, adding emotion or suspense or subtext by element order, word choice, juxtaposition. Sentence-meaning construction is so context-dependent there are no rules about what will work. (In fact, Theresa allows that occasionally an intro participle will work, and I have been known to approve the infrequent fragment.) So no one can say something will work until it works. But that means that if you want that voice, that authority, you have to know what you want this sentence to mean and maybe experiment until you achieve that. And part of the wonder of creating a good, meaningful sentence is that you will allow room for additional meaning that you didn't necessarily intend.

The sentence is one of the many wonders of the English language-- endlessly flexible, and open to subtle manipulation. To gain that level of authority, however, you have to be willing to experiment, and to develop an ear and an eye for the construction that -in this context- will create the right meaning.
Alicia