Sheets don't sleep. That's why this sentence is a classic example of a dangling participle. A dangling participle is just one type of dangling modifier or, more simply, dangler.

During a visit to the Edinburgh Zoo, Geoff Pullum figures out the source of a remarkable piece of erroneous grammar advice that mistakes verbless clausal dangling modifiers for passive clauses.

Sheets don’t sleep. That’s why this sentence is a classic example of a dangling participle. A dangling participle is just one type of dangling modifier or, more simply, dangler.

One mistake many make in this regard is courting dangling modifiers. These are modifiers so loosely put in sentences that you do not know which parts of the structures they are working with.

When he was teaching journalism, he found that the dangling modifier was the most common grammar mistake he encountered. Fortunately, most danglers are easily fixed.

Consider, though, that James Donaldson, who provides this example in his recent doctoral dissertation, also cites 21 dangling modifiers from a rather more critically admired source: Virginia Woolf.

Okay, now we're going to tackle the dangling participle. A participle is the form of the verb that has ing on the end of it. And when you begin a sentence with a participle, that phrase has to ...