Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: danglers (4).

danglers (4). Today, Part A: Past-Participial Danglers. These are especially common when the main clause begins with a possessive — e.g.: “Born on March 12, 1944, in Dalton, Georgia, Larry Lee Simms’s qualifications . . . .” Barbara H. Craig, Chadha: The Story of an Epic Constitutional Struggle 79 (1988). (Simms’s qualifications were not born on March 12 — he was. A possible revision: “Born on March 12, 1944, in Dalton, Georgia, Larry Lee Simms had qualifications that . . . .”) Part B: Dangling Gerunds. These are close allies to dangling participles, but here the participle acts as a noun rather than as an adjective when it is the object of a preposition: o “By instead examining the multigenerational ethnic group, it becomes clear that the Irish had fully adjusted to American society by the time of the First World War.” Michael Cottrell, Book Rev., Canadian Hist. Rev., Sept. 1994, at 453. (A possible revision: “By instead examining the multigenerational ethnic group, we see that the Irish . . . .”) o “Without belaboring the point, the central premise of this article is that the average pharmacist, preparing myriad prescriptions each day, does not have the time to provide CPS.” Matthew M. Murawski, “Introduction to Personnel Management,” Drug Topics, 10 June 1996, at 170. (A possible revision: “In brief, the central premise of this article . . . .”) For information about the Language-Change Index, click here. Next: Acceptable Danglers, or Disguised Conjunctions. ————————– Quotation of the Day: “The normalization of language serves to enlarge its range of communicability over space and time.” E.D. Hirsch, The Philosophy of Composition 40 (1977).