6 | How to Stop Dangling Your Participles

Best Practices

A participle is a verbal form that serves as an adjective.^[1] Present participles end in -ing (e.g., showing, writing), whereas past participles have various endings, such as -ed, -t, -n (e.g., showed, written).

A dangling participle is a grammatical error in which the participle is not clearly related to the noun (or noun phrase) that it is modifying. This can occur when the participle is positioned next to the wrong noun (too far away from the intended one) or when there is no noun for it to modify. This is a very common error in scientific documents, and examples are given below.

This sentence contains a misplaced participle phrase: “Having experience with CRISPR technologies, the proposed research will benefit from the involvement of Dr. Noteworthy.” The doctor, not the proposed research, possesses the experience. One way to correct this dangle is to rearrange the text, “Dr. Noteworthy, having experience with CRISPR technologies, will be a valuable member of the proposed research team.” Or you can lose the participle all together, “The proposed research will benefit from the involvement of Dr. Noteworthy, who has experience with CRISPR technology.”

The following sentence is missing a noun for the participle using: “Mice were photographed using a camera as they explored different features of the new habitat.” What talented mice! The simplest fix here is to add the subject to the participle phrase as follows: “We used a camera to photograph the mice as they explored …”

A quick (but not always best^[2]) fix for dangling forms of “using” is to replace or supplement the term with a preposition, such as “with,” “by means of,” or “by using.”

While many people can figure out the meaning of a sentence with a dangling participle, the interpretation process takes time and detracts from the writing quality. Avoid dangling participles.