Why Sentence Structure Really, Really Matters — Especially with Participial Phrases
By: Karen Degroot Carter
Tags: Writing Well, Editing, Self Improvement, Education, Writing

WRITING WELL

Why Sentence Structure Really, Really Matters — Especially with Participial Phrases

Photo by Chris Hardy on Unsplash

In my last Writing Well post, I explored participles that express “an action or a state of being (as a verb does)” while modifying “a noun or pronoun (as an adjective does).” In the example “Laughing, the boy tried to catch the jumping frog,” the participle “laughing” modifies “the boy,” and the participle “jumping” modifies “frog.”

But, you might argue, both “laughing” and “jumping” aren’t always used to modify something as in these examples: “He enjoys laughing” and “She enjoys jumping.” As I noted in my Writing Well post on “ing” words, there are three types of words that share the “ing” ending: participles, verbs, and gerunds. When an “ing” word modifies something, though, it’s a participle.

When an “ing” word is preceded by a “to be” verb (“am,” “is,” “are,” “was,” “were,” “be,” “being,” or “been”), it’s also a participle. And participles can end not only in “ing” but in “ed” (as in “encouraged”), “en” (as in “forsaken”), “d” (as in “tired”), “t” (as in “dealt”), “n” (as in “seen”), and “ne” (as in “gone”). All participles are formed by adding one of the listed endings to a verb such as “laugh,” “jump,” “encourage,” “forsake,” “tire,” “deal,” “see,” and “go.”

Participial phrases and punctuation

Definitions of the term “participial phrase” are detailed. Once you understand participles, though, it’s easier to understand participial phrases by looking at examples such as the following. In each, the participial phrase is in italics, and the participle within the participial phrase is in bold:

Encouraged by her good grades, she began to study more.

His toddler, tired after such a busy morning, fell asleep.

Students engaged in extracurricular activities may enjoy school more.

Her daughter raced to the finish line, breaking the record.

They saw the storm approaching from the west.

You’ll notice that while each of these sentences includes a participial phrase, only some of these sentences include one or more commas. The need for a single comma or dual commas with a participial phrase is determined by the phrase’s placement and, when it doesn’t start a sentence, the type of information it provides or its proximity to the noun or pronoun it modifies.

In the first example above, “Encouraged by his good grades” begins the sentence, so a comma is needed after it. In the second example, “tired after such a busy morning” appears in the middle of the sentence but does not provide information essential to the meaning of the sentence, so it’s set off by commas. In the third example, “engaged in extracurricular activities” also comes in the middle of the sentence but is essential for the sentence to make sense, so no commas are added around it. As I state in my Writing Well post on appositives, “While extra info requires commas, essential info does not.”

In the fourth example, “breaking the record” comes at the end of the sentence but is far from the noun it modifies (“daughter”), so a comma is needed before it. And in the final example, “approaching from the west” ends the sentence but immediately follows the noun it modifies (“storm”), so no comma is needed.

The dreaded dangling modifier dilemma

I’ve mentioned issues related to poor sentence construction in multiple posts. When a prepositional phrase is involved, this issue can look something like this:

“Staring out the kitchen window, the view of his garden reminded him to call his dad.”

As the Purdue OWL website puts it, this is an example of a “dangling modifier error.” “Since the modifier (the participial phrase) is not modifying any specific noun in the sentence,” the modifier is “left dangling.” Please don’t do that to a poor prepositional phrase.

Since it makes no sense to say “the view” (or anything else but a living thing with eyes) is “staring” out any kind of window, this sentence should be rewritten to put the noun or pronoun the prepositional phrase modifies immediately after the prepositional phrase. This option, for example, would work: “Staring out the kitchen window, Simon was reminded by the view of his garden to call his dad.” Or this option with a longer prepositional phrase might be better yet: “Staring out the kitchen window at his garden, Simon remembered to call his dad.”

Either way, your reader will thank you.