Suitable for lady modifies desk. There's nothing else it could be referring to. That's not true of our next prepositional phrase, with thick legs and large drawers.
See, here's the thing about modifiers: people usually expect them to modify the closest possible word, not one that's farther away in the sentence. When you write, Derek had a pine armoire, a wooden bench, and a desk with thick legs and large drawers, nobody is going to wonder whether the armoire or the bench had thick legs and large drawers. They're going to assume that this modifier is deliberately and correctly affixed to the noun closest to it. That's the Reader's expectation, and as writers we must be careful to accommodate it.
Our classified ad defies Reader expectation. It sets the modifier with thick legs and large drawers right next to lady, creating a very different image indeed.
Misplaced or poorly placed prepositional phrases can crop up in a lot of different sentence structures. But if you think of prepositional phrases as modifiers and keep your focus on the things they modify, you'll do fine.
Often, the fixes are very simple:
Problem sentence: They said it's going to rain on the radio.
Solution: Move the prepositional phrase on the radio closer to the verb it modifies: said.
Improved sentence: They said on the radio that it's going to rain.
Problem sentence: I photographed an elephant in my pajamas.
Solution: Move the prepositional phrase in my pajamas closer to the pronoun it modifies: I.
Improved sentence: In my pajamas, I photographed an elephant.
Problem sentence: Fine food expertly served by waitresses in appetizing forms. (Note that this has two prepositional phrases, but the first one, by waitresses, clearly modifies served.)
Solution: Move the prepositional phrase in appetizing forms closer to the noun it modifies: food.
Improved sentence: Fine food in appetizing forms expertly served by waitresses.
Not all fixes are as easy.
In mixing bowl set designed to please cook with round bottom for efficient beating, we could just move our prepositional phrase to get mixing bowl set with round bottom for efficient beating designed to please cook. But now the modifier designed to please cook comes right after beating. Is that confusing? Perhaps not. But it's still a little weird. It's better to rewrite it. You could ditch the stuff about designed to please cook. That's already pretty clear. Or you could put it into another sentence: Mixing bowl set with round bottom for efficient beating. Cooks love it. Or perhaps Designed to please cook: Mixing bowl set with round bottom for efficient beating.
Prepositional phrases can also work mischief with lists. Readers know that sometimes one modifier can apply to everything in a list:
She sang "Fame," "The Promise," and "Lies" with great gusto.
Other times the modifier might refer to only the nearest noun: Kirk ate ravioli, pizza, and strawberries with whipped cream.
We'll examine this dynamic more in chapter 15. Here, the important thing is to remember that prepositional phrases work a lot like adjectives and adverbs and your Reader has some pretty strong ideas about where they should go.
Running down the street in high heels, my dog was too fast for me to catch.
Really? Your dog wears high heels? That's hot.
Walking down the beach, my shoulders got sunburned.
How nice of your shoulders to give your feet a break from all that walking.
Stuffed with chestnuts, Peter served the turkey.
Why was Peter eating so many chestnuts right before dinner?
In the last chapter, we saw how prepositional phrases work as modifiers. In the chapter before that, we saw how relative clauses work as modifiers. In this chapter, we'll look at how participial units like walking down the beach and stuffed with chestnuts can also be modifiers. There's just one problem: no one knows whether we should call these units phrases or clauses.
And when I say no one, I mean no one.
Some expert sources, including The Oxford English Grammar and The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, usually call these participial clauses. Other expert sources, including veteran grammar teacher and grammar-book author Laurie Rozakis, PhD, say they're phrases. Still other experts say the difference is just a matter of interpretation—theoretical stuff that doesn't affect how we handle them. One of these experts is Cambridge Grammar of the English Language coauthor Geoffrey Pullum. I e-mailed him myself to ask.
It's not about what you call them. It's about where you put them. Put one in the wrong place, and it qualifies as a misplaced modifier, just as prepositional phrases like with round bottom for efficient beat-ing do.
A participle is a verb form that usually ends in ing, ed, or en. The -ing form is called the progressive participle. The -ed and -en forms are called past participles, though irregular verbs don't follow the pattern: shown, brought, led, dealt, leapt, seen, and so on, are all past participles. Past participles work with forms of have and progressive participles work with forms of be to form different verb conjugations: We have walked, Joe is walking, and so on.
But you can also use a participle to modify a noun—just like an adjective. Look at painted in They have painted the wall and It's a painted wall. In the first example, it's part of a verb. In the second, it is essentially an adjective. Another example: Life has broken Henry and Henry is a broken man.
A participial phrase or clause, then, is simply any participle that serves as a modifier. And it can do so with or without accessories:
Exhausted, Harry fell into bed.
Exhausted from the long hike, Harry fell into bed.
Speeding, Nanette hit a pole.
Speeding in her Ferrari, Nanette hit a pole.
Eating, Dave almost choked.
Eating pastrami, Dave almost choked.
Either way, a participial phrase or clause can be seen as a modifier. It modifies a noun or pronoun. So from our examples, who was exhausted? Harry. And who was speeding? Nanette. Harry and Nanette are the nouns being modified by those participial units.
Now identify what's wrong with this sentence:
Daydreaming about Nanette, Dan's foot went right into
a puddle.
Either Dan has one smart foot, or we have on our hands the legendary beast known as the dangling participle.
A dangling participle is simply a participle that seems to point to the wrong noun.
As we saw in our chapter on prepositional phrases, Readers usually expect a modifier to refer to the closest noun. That's why, in our last example, we're suggesting that Dan's foot was daydreaming and not Dan. To fix these, just make sure that you've chosen the right noun—for example, "Dan" instead of "foot"—and that the participial phrase or clause that's modifying it is as close as possible.
Daydreaming about Nanette, Dan stepped in a puddle.
You can also make your participial phrase or clause into a subordinate clause so it's no longer a modifier and therefore no longer has to be right next to whatever it's modifying:
While Dan was daydreaming about Nanette, his foot went right into a puddle.
That's it. That's as hard it gets. Get past the fear of the grammar jargon and you see that dangling participles are very simple.
Participles aren't the only things that can dangle:
A Kentucky Derby-winning colt, Thunderbolt's jockey was very proud.
Did you catch it? We just called the jockey a colt. This is a tricky one because it looks as though the colt, Thunderbolt, comes right after the modifier. But no. We didn't write Thunderbolt. We wrote Thunderbolt's, rendering it a modifier. In the noun phrase Thunderbolt's jockey, the headword jockey, not Thunderbolt's.
There's one more danger with participles. Because some are identical to gerunds, they can get confusing:
Visiting relatives can be fun.
Does this mean that the act of visiting (visiting as a gerund) can be fun, or that relatives who are visiting you (visiting as a modifier) can be fun? We d
on't know. Subtler examples crop up all the time in professional writing:
Here are the trends leading interior designers and industry experts across the country have predicted will be hot this season.
After pausing, the Reader can see that leading is an adjective modifying interior designers and not an action being performed by trends. But it's usually best not to force the Reader to do a doubletake:
Here are the trends that leading interior designers and industry experts across the country have predicted will be hot this season.
The best way to avoid danglers is to stay vigilant. After a while it becomes a working part of the brain. Considering how much this can help your sentences, it's worth the effort.
From time to time, a writer will post something like this on a writers' Internet message board:
Help! I can't get this sentence out of the passive: "Emma was walking down the street."
The writer may add that she knows this sentence is passive because it has a form of to be (in this case was) coupled with a word that ends in ing: walking. There's just one problem. The sentence is not passive. Neither is this:
Sue had been considering doing some thinking about being more accepting and becoming more loving.
Horrible, yes. Passive, no. At least, not in the sense we mean when we talk about the passive voice.
There are two myths about passives that we need to debunk right away:
1. Passive structure is bad.
2. Passive structure is any action-impaired sentence that uses an -ing or -ed verb with a form of to be (like is or was).
Caveats about passives have been overstated and distorted. Yes, passives can be awful. Yes, they're a serious problem for some novice writers. Yes, you need to be on the lookout for them. But this doesn't mean passives are always bad. They're quite useful when used wisely—indispensable, even. So here's how you should look at them. It will probably sound familiar: passive voice is a powerful tool in the hands of a skilled writer, but it's brain-numbing poison in the hands of an unskilled writer. So you should understand the concept and use the passive only by choice. Learn to recognize passive sentences so you can consider whether they would be better in the active voice.
Luckily, the concept is easy to master.
Here's the best way to understand passive voice: it occurs when the object of an action is made the grammatical subject of a sentence. (Technically, it's more precise to say that the passive occurs when the object of a transitive verb is made the subject of a sentence. But if that makes your eyes glaze over, stick with the first definition.) Compare these two sentences:
Ned made the coffee.
The coffee was made by Ned.
In the first example, we have someone performing an action, followed by the action itself, followed by the thing being acted upon: subject + verb + object. In the second example, the thing being acted upon, the object, is made the subject of our sentence. That's passive structure. Let's look at some more examples:
Active: Becky threw the ball.
Passive: The ball was thrown by Becky.
Active: Manny gave Ralph the gun.
Passive: The gun was given to Ralph by Manny.
Active: Everybody loves pasta.
Passive: Pasta is loved by everybody.
Active: The monster ate Victoria.
Passive: Victoria was eaten by the monster.
Any of the passives in these examples might be the best choice under certain circumstances. That last one in particular seems to work well in its passive form.
Now that we understand passives, we know that our first example, Emma was walking, isn't passive, because Emma is both the doer of the action and the grammatical subject of the sentence.
Let's practice. Convert the following passive sentences into active form:
The cake was baked by Rodney.
The compliments were appreciated by the hostess.
The money was stolen.
Okay, that was sneaky of me. I threw in that last one to illustrate an important point: Often, a passive construction will contain a nice little by phrase that tells you who or what is performing the action.
But that by phrase is optional. Writers often drop it. And you can't convert the sentence into active form unless you know who or what should be your new sentence's subject. You can change the first two into active voice because we know that Rodney baked the cake and the hostess appreciated the compliments. But we don't know who stole the money.
If we really want to make this sentence active, we can come up with a subject. We can say Judy stole the money if we know for a fact that Judy did it. If we don't know, we can say someone stole the money or a thief stole the money. But in a situation like this, the best option is often to leave the sentence in the passive. In fact, that's when passives are best: anytime you want to downplay the doer of an action.
The president was re-elected emphasizes the president in a way that an active form such as The voters re-elected the president does not. In the first sentence, you're talking about the president. In the second, you're talking about voters, which may not be what you want.
Sometimes, passives are the greatest thing in the world:
Professor Persimmon is considered a leading economic expert.
Meryl Streep is widely regarded as one of the greatest actors of her generation.
Taking those out of the passive would change the character of the sentences considerably:
People consider Professor Persimmon an expert.
American moviegoers regard Meryl Streep as one of the greatest actors of her generation.
These flip-flops put the focus in a different place entirely. They call attention to the missing information, leading to questions like What people? Which moviegoers? Who are these folks who get to decide such things, and why didn't anybody ask my opinion?
By de-emphasizing these issues, passives let a writer be sneaky. For example, if a writer is too lazy to actually find out Professor Persimmon's credentials, a passive is considered can be a convenient weasel-like way to make unsubstantiated assertions.
But, once again, we come right back to our guiding light of Reader-serving writing. Sidestepping certain questions—like Who anointed Professor Persimmon a leading expert?—can be a fine way to keep the focus where it needs to be in order to best serve the Reader. If your article is about the economy, there's probably no reason you must spend time discussing your economist's credentials or who bestowed them on him. If you're working in the Reader's best interest and have thus earned his trust, you don't have to verify every value judgment your story might make. You can get on to more relevant information instead. In that case, a passive sentence about Persimmon's credentials is just fine.
Let's do two more quick practice sentences. Convert these into active form:
Kevin was being watched.
Kevin was being coy.
How'd you do? Your answer for the first one should look something like Someone was watching Kevin or Nelson was watching Kevin or The voyeur was watching Kevin. Your answer for the second one— well, as you may have guessed, it was a trick question.
The first sentence is passive. The second one is not. Remember our simple definition of passive voice: when the object of an action is made the grammatical subject of the sentence. We can easily see that an action is taking place in our first sentence and Kevin is on the receiving end of it. He's the doee, not the doer.
But the second sentence, though structured almost identically, does not make Kevin the object of an action. Someone is watching him, but no one is coying him. Coy is an adjective, not an action. That is, though watch is a transitive verb, coy isn't a verb at all. Therefore the second sentence is not passive. It's active.
All this leads to the question of how, exactly, you form passives.
You just use a form of to be as something called an auxiliary combined with something The Oxford English Grammar calls the passive participle, which is identical to the past participle. As we saw in th
e last chapter, participles are pieces of conjugated verbs. Past participles are the pieces that usually end in ed or em
In the past you have walked.
On that morning, you had woken.
Irregular verb participles often don't end in ed or en:
woken (past participle of wake) driven (past participle of drive) drunk (past participle of drink) spoken (past participle of speak) risen (past participle of rise) thought (past participle of think) lain (past participle of lie)
But whether your verb is regular or irregular, forming a passive is simple. Just flip-flop the doer and the doee in your sentence and insert an auxiliary to be before a passive participle:
Larry watched Kevin.
Kevin was [auxiliary] watched [passive participle] by Larry.
Even if your active sentence already contains a form of to be as an auxiliary, it's the same idea. Just flip-flop the doer and the doee and insert another auxiliary to be before a passive participle:
Larry was watching Kevin [active sentence with form of to be as auxiliary]
Kevin was being watched by Larry [passive sentence with inserted auxiliary, being, working with original auxiliary, was]
That's more analysis than instruction, by the way. No one ever stops and says, "Now what's that dang formula for making passives again?" Passives come pretty naturally, even to people who have no idea what a participle is. So don't worry about the mechanics. Just start recognizing passive sentences and considering whether they would be better in active form. The answer can be subjective. But the passives that writing pros consider bad are the ones that squelch interesting action.
Tim was shot by Barbara is anemic compared to Barbara shot Tim. The latter has a sense of immediacy and power. Passive forms dilute that power. In our active form, the action is the verb. In passive form, the verb emphasizes being more than doing. That's what people mean
when they say that passives are bad. Yes, their point is overstated, but there's a big lump of truth at its center. Passives often stink:
After he had been flown to Chicago and had been checked into his hotel room, he was called on the phone by his boss.
Sometimes, the best way to fix bad passives is to restructure the passage:
It was the best of Sentences, it was the worst of sentences. Page 7