dangly bits
In my series of posts on copy editing, I wanted to discuss those grammar mistakes with a sense of humor: dangling participles.
Before I go into dangling participles, I need to tell you about participial phrase first.
A participial phrase includes a participle, or a word that ends in -ing, and modifies the subject of the sentence. You’ll find participial phrases hanging out at the beginning of sentences often. For instance, in the sentence Finding the tv remote under the sofa, Justin sat down to watch the game, “Finding” is the participle and the rest of the clause to the comma is the participial phrase. This particular sentence is correct; no dangly bits there.
Things start to dangle when the participial phrase doesn’t have a logical subject to modify. A lot of times dangling participles create funny images.
Here’s one: Driving like a maniac, the deer was hit and killed. Chances are the deer wasn’t the one driving, right? The subject I is missing from the sentence and the participial phrase doesn’t have it to modify. It’s dangling. All you need to do to fix the sentence is insert the subject into the sentence: Driving like a maniac, I hit and killed the deer.
The participial phrase isn’t always at the beginning of the sentence, though. I smelled the oysters coming down the stairs for dinner. I’m pretty sure the oysters weren’t walking down the stairs. Although, if I’m wrong, I want to read that story. The error in this sentence is that the participial phrase is modifying “oysters” and not “I.” How would you fix that sentence?
Prompt Up
Prompt up is our optional weekly writing prompt for the fiction|poetry challenge! Here’s how it works: we announce a sentence prompt from last week’s winning nonfiction post. It’s your job to use that prompt in your story or poem in some way. Feel free to use it as your first sentence, move it somewhere else, change it, or float it down to other territories.
Normally, I pick the prompt up. But since I won the popular vote last week, Michelle got to do it. So these are her words about my essay: His moving piece, Anchors, is a must read. This week’s prompt up is: “I am rewarded with a kiss and a smirk.”
March poetry slam: blank verse
We want to get back to the basics this month. The basics of poetry, that is. It’s been almost two years since we first delved into blank verse for a poetry slam, and while we’d like to pretend all the new folks go back through our writing help section regularly, even we don’t do that. But blank verse is one of the building blocks of great poetry, and even if it’s not your favorite form, there’s tremendous value in learning to do it well. So this month we’re going back to the blank page to write some blank verse. Learn more from Rowan here.
Please remember to read the submission guidelines before you press post or hit send. Have a favorite yeah writer or two? Why not ask them to be your writing partner? Everyone needs another set of eyes to point out the typos, word repetitions, content errors, and ungainly phraseologies in our posts.
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Yeah write #309 fiction|poetry writing challenge is open for submissions!
Basic yeah write guidelines: 750 word limit; your entry can be dated no earlier than this past Sunday; fiction or poetry only.
How to submit and fully participate in the challenge:
- In the sidebar of this week’s post, please grab the code beneath the challenge grid badge and paste it into the HTML view of your entry
- Follow the InLinkz instructions after clicking “add your link” to upload your entry to this week’s challenge grid
- Your entry should appear immediately on the grid if you don’t receive an error message
- Please make the rounds to read all the entries in this week’s challenge
- Consider turning off moderated comments and CAPTCHA on your own blog
Submissions for this week’s challenges will close on Wednesday at 10pm ET. Voting will then open immediately thereafter and close on Thursday at 10pm ET. The winners, as always, will be celebrated on Friday.
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