This is another mistake that’s easy to make and difficult to catch, and I personally see it surprisingly often when I’m proofing copy. Also referred to as a dangling modifier, this mistake can be tricky to describe. Chances are you don’t even know what a participle is! So, let me give you an example of a dangling participle, and how to use dangling participles so we can go from there:
“Being in dilapidated condition, I was able to buy the house very cheap.”
The part of the sentence that comes before the comma is a participial phrase. It contains the verb “being” in a phrase that acts as an adjective to describe the subject. The problem here is that it’s describing the wrong subject. The way the sentence is built seems not only to suggest that the person who bought the house was in “dilapidated condition,” but also that it’s the reason he or she got the house for a bargain! It just doesn’t make sense.
The rule is that participial phrases need to refer to the grammatical subject. How to quickly tell if the phrase is describing the correct object? Always make sure the noun or pronoun that comes after the comma is what the phrase before the comma is describing:
“Being in dilapidated condition, the house was very inexpensive.”
However, as I mentioned, this isn’t always so easy to catch:
“Walking slowly down the road, he saw a woman accompanied by two children.”
It seems like the participial phrase here could refer easily to both “he” and “the woman.” The problem here is that “he” is not the grammatical subject of the sentence. Look at who the verbs are describing: “he saw” creates a second subject-verb phrase, so logically the woman was the one walking. If “he” was both walking and seeing, the sentence would have to be constructed differently:
“He was walking slowly down the road when he saw a woman accompanied by two children.”
This is a very sneaky example that could slip by the sly eye of even the most experienced editor on a normal day. The problem arises most often from reckless sentence construction, and thus can be avoided by sticking to the KISS rule. Keep it simple, stupid!
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