Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill [288]
corrections: After the girls ate their sandwiches, the steamboat left the dock. Or, After eating their sandwiches, the girls boarded the steamboat, and it left the dock.
Comment: The two corrections model the two ways of remedying most dangling participles. Both provide an antecedent (the girls) for the pronoun their. The first correction eliminates the participial phrase and substitutes a subordinate clause. The second correction adds to the existing main clause (steamboat left) another one (girls boarded) for the participial phrase to modify appropriately.
2. Original example: The social workers saw an elderly woman on a bus with a cane standing up.
Problem: Misplaced modifiers create the problems in this sentence, which implies that the bus possessed a cane that was standing up. The problem exemplified here is produced by the series of prepositional phrases—“on a bus with a cane”—followed by the participial phrase standing up, which is used as an adjective and intended to modify woman.
Possible correction: The social workers saw an elderly woman on a bus. She was standing up with the help of a cane.
Comment: Writers often try to cram too much into sentences, piling on the prepositions. The best remedy is sometimes to break up the sentence, a move that usually involves eliminating prepositions, which possess a sludgy kind of movement, and adding verbs, which possess more distinct movement.
3. Original example: Crossing the street, a car hit the pedestrian.
Problem: The dangling participle (Crossing the street) does not have a word to modify in the sentence. The sentence conveys that the car crossed the street.
Possible corrections: Crossing the street, the pedestrian was hit by a car. Or: As the pedestrian crossed the street, a car hit him.
Comment: The first solution brings the participial phrase closest to the noun it modifies (pedestrian). The second converts the participial into the verb (crossed) of a dependent as clause and moves pedestrian into the clause as the subject for that verb. As in the steamboat example, one correction provides an appropriate noun for the participial phrase to modify, and the other eliminates the participle.
Test Yourself 19.9: Possessive Apostrophes
Original example: The womens movement has been misunderstood by many of its detractors.
Problem: The possessive apostrophe for womens is missing. The trickiness here in inserting the apostrophe is that this word is already plural.
Possible correction: The women’s movement has been misunderstood by many of its detractors.
Comment: Because the word is already plural, it takes a simple “–’s” to indicate a movement belonging to women—not “–s’” (womens’).
Test Yourself 19.10: Comma Errors
Original paired examples: The book which I had read a few years ago contained a lot of outdated data.
The book that I had read a few years ago contained a lot of outdated data.
Problem: In the first example, the modifying clause “which I had read a few years ago” is nonrestrictive: it could be omitted without changing the essential meaning of the sentence. Therefore, it needs to be enclosed in commas—as the which signals.
Possible correction: The book, which I had read a few years ago, contained a lot of outdated data.
Comment: The second example in the pair is correct as it stands. The restrictive clause, “that I had read a few years ago,” does not take commas around it because the information it gives readers is an essential part of the meaning of book. That is, it refers to not just any book read a few years ago, as in the first example in the pair, but rather specifies the one containing outdated data. “The book that I had read a few years ago” thus functions as what is known as a noun phrase.
Test Yourself 19.11: Spelling/Diction Errors
Original example: Its not sufficiently acknowledged that the behavior of public officials is not just an ethical issue but one that effects the sale of newspapers and commercial bytes in television