In his short but cutting review of Simon Heffer's Strictly English, Steven Poole remarks that the book "condemns hanging participles yet perpetrates a monster (on p165, too tedious to quote here)." What was this tedious monster, I feel sure you Language Log readers are asking? The sentence in question is the second one in this quotation (from the beginning of a section; I underline the relevant phrase):
Partridge has a long entry in Usage and Abusage on the word got – he could as easily have made the entry about the word get – but, if anything, this unusually strict grammarian lets the promiscuous and often thoughtless use of this term off lightly.3 Without detracting from Fowler's point that the Anglo-Saxon is to be preferred to the Romance at all times, the use of the verb to get in an increasing number of contexts is not merely "slovenly" (Partridge's word): it is downright confusing.
3. Usage and Abusage, p136.
Is that really a mistake?
The "hanging participle" (it is more common to say "dangling participle" or "dangling modifier", as I will do here) is the gerund-participial clause beginning with detracting, i.e. this clause:
detracting from Fowler's point that the Anglo-Saxon is to be preferred to the Romance at all times
It has no subject, and as one casts about for some noun phrase that might be understood as its subject, one fails to come up with anything. But does that matter?
Nothing in the preceding sentence suggests a candidate logical subject; and the main clause subject of the sentence (which follows it) is the use of the verb to get in an increasing number of contexts, which surely cannot be the right choice. That is, he cannot surely mean this:
??Without the use of the verb to get in an increasing number of contexts detracting from Fowler's point that the Anglo-Saxon is to be preferred to the Romance at all times, the use of the verb to get in an increasing number of contexts is not merely "slovenly" (Partridge's word): it is downright confusing.
What he means is instead surely something like this:
Without detracting from Fowler's point that the Anglo-Saxon is to be preferred to the Romance at all times, I would nonetheless like to point out that the use of the verb to get in an increasing number of contexts is not merely "slovenly" (Partridge's word): it is downright confusing.
The understood subject of detracting is first person singular: it is Heffer who might detract from Fowler's point about Anglo-Saxon words such as get being better than French or Latin words like obtain or requisition, and he wants to forestall any such detraction but nonetheless wishes to say that he thinks Partridge didn't come down hard enough on the over-use of the versatile verb get.
Heffer has certainly written a classic dangling modifier, so we know he cannot follow his own rules. And if the dangling modifier is a really bad writing fault, he is guilty of bad writing. Certainly he himself insists on its badness. He warns against this sin 64 pages earlier, with a standard invented example taken from a grammar book of about a hundred years ago (almost all his sources are close to a century old; here he is citing C. T. Onions): After fighting the flames for several hours the ship was abandoned. This is wrong, Heffer says, because it was not the ship that fought the flames.
What he seems to be demanding is that if a subjectless gerund-participial clause is used as preposed adjunct, or as here, is the complement of a preposition (after) in a preposition phrase used as a preposed adjunct, the semantically understood subject of the gerund-participle must be whatever is the referent of the subject of the matrix clause (here, the ship).
He gives several other examples that he collected himself. And incidentally, in doing so he shows again that he is an utter incompetent at grammar, because he gives this as an example:
The day before he died, David Cameron and his wife played with their son.
This is an embarrassing slip. What he's objecting to is that the pronoun he could refer either to their son (the right choice), or to David Cameron (the wrong choice); there is risk of misunderstanding. But this is just an ambiguity of pronoun reference, and it has nothing to do with dangling participles at all. There are no participles at all in this sentence. Heffer cannot tell his participle from a hole in the ground.
But back to our main theme. Is it truly so terrible to have dangled a participle as he does in the example about detracting from Fowler's point?
The irony is that the answer is no: in the particular case at hand it does not matter much. There are many semi-conventionalized participial adjuncts (or adjuncts containing subjectless participial clauses as complements) that seem just fine for any native speaker to interpret, and are happily used by even expert and careful writers:
Moving right along, this slide shows the third quarter figures.
Seeing as you're here, there must be some ulterior motive for the visit.
Without detracting from Fowler's point, aren't some Anglo-Saxon verbs overused?
In order to move right along, let's look at the third quarter figures.
In view of the fact that you're here, there must be some ulterior motive for the visit.
Without prejudice to Fowler's point, what exactly is a relative clause?
Do not misunderstand me: I am not saying that dangling participles are always OK, or that Heffer is wrong about everything, or that Heffer writes badly. It is all a little bit more subtle than that.
- Some dangling participles are definitely cases of bad writing. After fighting the flames for several hours the ship was abandoned is obscure and puzzling about who fought the flames; and some examples are ludicrously misunderstandable, like the classic invented example Trembling with fear, the clock suddenly struck midnight (see this post and many other Language Log posts on the same topic).
- It would be perfectly reasonable for a writing guide to recommend that such sentences should be avoided. The problem with Heffer is that he doesn't know how to do that — he can't characterize or identify what he's trying to warn against. He botches his job, and states an over-general rule that he cannot even obey himself (despite all the help that Random House copy editors could provide).
- Although Heffer does violate his own rule, the sentence he writes is a good illustration of why that rule is too broadly and strictly stated. He wrote a sentence that falls within the small range of semi-conventionlized cases that don't sound all that bad to experienced users of English. So under his own framing of the rule, he is guilty; but through his incompetence he has actually been unfair to himself.
This usage stuff is not straightforward and easy. If ever someone tells you that the rules of English grammar are simple and logical and you should just learn them and obey them, walk away, because you're getting advice from a fool.