About participial phrases

What are they
When you go to the online dictionary, www.dictionary.com and key in participial phrases, you will be led to quite a number of sites and if you choose to access this site http://department.monm.edu/english/kroberts/english201/project2002/
group10/participial.htm, you will see that participial phrases are present participles or past participles and any modifiers, objects or complements, and contain verbs which act as adjectives in a sentence.

Now, we know the definition of participial phrases. Does it mean that we know how to use them correctly? Oh, that is not the case.

In fact, participial phrases are often inappropriately used by writers who are not vigilant enough, and the relative sentences will then have different meanings. Dangling modifiers are the name given for such misuses and have been mentioned in quite a few articles in this column.

So, I shall just quote an example to show a dangling modifier in the next paragraph.

Dangling modifier
Ipoh has a new landmark in the form of a 23.5m-tall statue of Lord Buddha. Built against the backdrop of the Sleeping Buddha Mountain in Tambun, a ceremony will be held next week to consecrate the statue. The latter sentence begins with a participial phrase which appears to modify a ceremony and therefore needs to be rewritten as “Built against the backdrop of the Sleeping Buddha Mountain in Tambun, the statue will be consecrated in a ceremony to be held next week."

How to avoid
Just bring the participial phrases as near as possible to the nouns or pronouns they modify.

Not only 'dangling modifiers' will plague you
There is another aspect in the use of participial phrases where writers may go wrong - that is the use of a present participle instead of a past participle and vice versa.

Below are sentences taken from newspaper articles/reports written by experienced writers.

Original sentence - Worried over soaring divorce rate in the state, the state government is offering to foot the bill for couples in troubled marriages to go for a second honeymoon.
What about - Worrying over soaring divorce rate in the state, the state government is offering to foot the bill for couples in troubled marriages to go for a second honeymoon.

We may wonder whether the two mean the same thing and whether the newspaper is correct in using the past participle. It can be seen from http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/ask_about_
english/pdfs/aae_08_s2_prog_6_worry_worried.pdf (which explains the difference between 'I worry about you' and 'I am worried about you' both being grammatically correct) that original sentence is referring to a specific situation while the amended one is a general statement. Hence, the newspaper is right.

Original sentence - Providing exposure to the most established and largest companies in China, the index tracks the performance of the top 50 Chinese A-shares based on market capitalisation.
What about - Provided exposure to the most established and largest companies in China, the index tracks the performance of the top 50 Chinese A-shares based on market capitalisation.

It should not pose any difficulty for us to realise that the original sentence is saying that since the index tracks the performance of the top 50 Chinese A-shares based on market capitalisation, the index is providing exposure to the most established and largest companies in China. Likewise, we should easily get the meaning of the amended one which says that because the index is provided exposure to the most established and largest companies in China, the index tracks the performance of the top 50 Chinese A-shares based on market capitalisation.

Lost? Don't be
Simply convert your intended participial phrase into a clause or a separate
sentence and see if you need a verb in the active voice (active verb) or one in the passive voice (passive verb) in such conversion. If it is the former, use the present participle in the participial phrase and if latter, use the past participle.

Invariably, we are advised that the use of participial phrases will spice up our writings, but we need to be careful to be able to steer clear of the above pitfalls to achieve the required effectiveness.

Kengt, Penang

The above was written by me on the invitation of a newspaper column promoting the use of correct English; but at the time of submission, I was surprised to learn that the co-ordinator/assistant editor in charge had no grammar ability to vet the article which was sent for vetting (with no response) by a regular contributor of the column.