Business Writing With Buzz

How to Trim Your Dangly Bits

Rosemary Gillespie - Wednesday, August 12, 2009
When I first heard about dangling participles and dangling modifiers, I was horrified: not more grammatical jargon to understand; not more writing traps to fall into.

Yet when we're writing marketing or sales materials, it’s important to be aware of dangly bits in our sentences (dangling participles, dangling modifiers and others like them, such as dangling prepositions) because they cause our readers a great deal of confusion.

Here are two examples:

Last week I met a man with three sons named John. Are the man’s sons all named John?

I let the cat out with my pyjamas on. Who was wearing the pyjamas?

What to watch for

We end up with dangly bits in our sentences when we try to add more detail about our subject – the person or thing carrying out the action – but fail to attach the extra detail to the subject.

For example:

To provide better outcomes, business transactions are carefully managed. Who provides better outcomes? No idea! How about: To provide our clients with better outcomes, we carefully manage every business transaction.

Smith & Smith Accountants has three partners with 100 years’ experience. Do all three partners have 100 years’ experience? It would be clearer to write: Smith & Smith Accountants has three partners. Together they have 100 years’ experience.

Sometimes we even leave out the subject, making who or what carried out the action anyone’s guess.

For example: Walking in the park, the birds were singing. Who or what is walking in the park? The writer? The birds? Someone or something else?

The example above starts with a dangling participle, walking. (A participle is the ‘doing’ part of a verb. For example, in I walk very slowly, walk is the participle.)

You will often find dangling participles at the start of sentences, so watch out for sentences that start with -ing verbs or past tense verbs, especially those ending in -ed.

Here’s another example:

Having recruited 10 lawyers, our clients will be well-serviced. Who has recruited the lawyers? The action here, or participle, is having recruited, but the subject is our clients. However, clients do not recruit lawyers, law firms do!

And a last, well-used, example:

Blown to pieces by the blast, the workers were clearing rubble from the buildings. Here, blown is the past participle of to blow. But it is not clear if the workers were blown to pieces, or the buildings.

For more help with your business writing, ring Rosemary on 02 9314 7506 or 0411 123 216.

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