Deconstructing and understanding those puzzling elliptical sentences

During the past three weeks, several members of Jose Carillo's English Forum made postings that expressed puzzlement over certain sentences that seemed to make sense grammatically even if they were clearly faulty in structure, with some words—sometimes even the obligatory verb—conspicuously missing. In practically every case, those sentences turned out to be elliptical sentences—sentences that surprisingly read right and sound right even if they appear to violate grammatical and structural rules with impunity.

To help learners of English deconstruct and understand such sentences, I wrote “The virtue of elliptical constructions,” a two-part essay for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in 2005. I am now posting that essay here not only to amplify and substantiate the quick explanations I have given to inquiring Forum members but also to give solid grounding on the subject to all those seeking to further enhance their English. (August 28, 2011)

The virtue of elliptical constructions

Part I:

Often in our English-language readings, we come across sentences that have certain words evidently missing yet surprisingly read right and sound right as well: “Those who wish to [...] can very well join me.” “The youngest staff in the office is as competent as the eldest [...].” “If she wants more of those 1905 coins, my brother can give her plenty [...].” In each instance, although a noun and a verb have been shed off somewhere, the sentences prove to be grammatically and semantically correct. They are, in fact, none the worse for the grammatical holes in them.

As suggested by the three periods enclosed by brackets, each of those grammatical holes is an ellipsis, and the sentences where they occur are called elliptical sentences. We can say that elliptical sentences reflect the natural aversion of humans to unnecessarily repeat themselves. The elliptical sentences shown above, for instance, are simply more concise constructions of these sentences: “Those who wish to join me can very well join me.” “The youngest staff in the office is as competent as the eldest staff in the office.” “If she wants more of those 1905-issue coins, my brother can give her plenty of those 1905-issue coins.”

By now the pattern and logic of elliptical constructions should be clear: they gracefully knock off repetitive words and phrases. The ellipsis takes it for granted that the reader would just mentally fill in the gaps with the missing grammatical elements.

As a rule, elliptical sentences consist of two independent clauses, one containing the grammar elements the other has left out. The independent clause with the missing elements is the elliptical clause—an abbreviated adverb clause stripped of its subject and verb.

Consider this sentence: “Although she is known for her ravishing beauty, Cornelia has an uncommonly vile temper.” Its adverb clause is “she is known for her ravishing beauty,” with “although” as subordinating marker; the independent clause is “Cornelia has an uncommonly vile temper.” Now see what happens when we make the adverb clause elliptical: “Although […] known for her ravishing beauty, Cornelia has an uncommonly vile temper.” Even after shedding “she is,” the sentence works just fine—more concise and emphatic, in fact, than the scrupulously complete one.

Ellipses can streamline sentences in many ways. Here are some of the common elliptical forms we’ll usually encounter in our English-language readings:

(1) The routine omission of “that” in modifying clauses, particularly in spoken English. This is the most familiar use of the ellipsis. Example: “They knew […] two years would be the shortest time […] they would need to subdue the enemy forces.” (Normal form: “They knew that two years would be the shortest time that they would need to subdue the enemy forces.”) Tongues are normally averse to wagging too many “that’s.”

(2) Elliptical noun phrases. Example: “Jennifer asked for the pink blouse but the salesclerk gave her the red […].” (Normal form: “Jennifer asked for the pink blouse but the salesclerk gave her the red blouse.”) Quite naturally, the disciplined mind resists the need to belabor the obvious.

(3) Ellipsis of the verb and its objects or complements. Example: “The beleaguered Supreme Court chief justice would fight it to the very end if he could […].” (Normal form: “The beleaguered Supreme Court chief justice would fight it to the very end if he could fight it to the very end.”)

(4) Medial (middle) ellipsis.  Example: “Arlene will take care of the girls and Eduardo […], the boys.” (Normal form: “Arlene will take care of the girls and Eduardo will take care of the boys.”) This fine ellipsis separates sophisticated English-language users from rank beginners.

(5) Ellipsis of clause. Examples: “They can leave now if they want […].” (Normal form: “They can leave now if they want to leave now.”) Certain elliptical clauses, however, need a comma to indicate that some words have been intentionally left out; otherwise, confusion might arise. Properly elliptical: “My tour group chose Paris; theirs, Rome.” Improperly elliptical: “My tour group chose Paris; theirs Rome.” (Normal form: “My tour group chose Paris; their group chose Rome.”)

(6) Ellipsis when words are left out in comparisons using “that” or “as.”  This is the trickiest ellipsis of all because we need to first establish the correct pronoun by filling in the missing words in the elliptical clause. Consider these two sentences: “Helen loves you more than I.” “Helen loves you more than me.” Gut feel tells us that only one of them is grammatically correct, but both actually are. For each of the sentences, in fact, we can fill in the missing words in a different way. The first turns out to be the elliptical construction of “Helen loves you more than I love you”; the second, of “Helen loves you more than she loves me.” Each is as grammatically and semantically airtight as the other.

Isn’t it nice that with the ellipsis, we can have it short and sweet both ways? (April 25, 2005)

Part II:

We continue our discussion of the ellipsis, which we defined in the preceding essay as a streamlining device that deliberately knocks off words and phrases from sentences and does not bother to replace them, depending instead on the reader or listener to mentally fill in the missing words based on context. We already took up the noun ellipsis, a gap in prose that takes the place of the noun phrase referred to in a previous clause or sentence. This time we will look more closely into the two other major types of ellipsis:  the verb ellipsis and the clause ellipsis.

Verb ellipsis. This type of ellipsis comes in two kinds. The first is the verb ellipsis that knocks off the verb and the modifying phrase that follows that verb, as in this statement: “He is a magnanimous yet strict boss, generous almost to a fault but never hesitant to dismiss incompetent people from their jobs when he has to […].” Here, the ellipsis dropped the second mention of the verb “dismiss” and the words “incompetent people from their jobs” to avoid needless repetition. The result is a more compact and elegant sentence than this one that doesn’t use ellipsis: “He is a magnanimous yet strict boss, generous almost to a fault but never hesitant to dismiss incompetent people from their jobs when he has to dismiss incompetent people from their jobs.”

Here’s another example: “It’s a pity that the new marketing assistant has to go. Our personnel manager was convinced that she didn’t perform well in her job, but on the whole, I really think she did […].” Here, the ellipsis dropped the second mention of the verb “perform” and the words “well in her job” to streamline the statement. See how repetitive the statement becomes when it doesn’t use ellipsis: “It’s a pity that the new secretary has to go. Our personnel manager was convinced that she didn’t perform well in her job, but on the whole, I really think she did perform well in her job.”

The second type of the verb ellipsis, on the other hand, knocks off the subject and the finite verb of a sentence. In the following statement, for example, the second, third and fourth sentences are elliptically constructed: “Can you imagine what we should be doing now had we joined the company outing? […] Swimming at the beach. […] Playing billiards at the clubhouse. Or […] singing at the karaoke bar at one of the beach cottages.” See how tedious and weird-sounding that passage becomes if, instead of using ellipses, it repeatedly uses the subject “what we should be doing now” and the finite verb “is” in all of the three succeeding sentences: “Can you imagine what we should be doing now had we joined the company outing? What we should be doing now is swimming at the beach. What we should be doing now is playing billiards at the clubhouse. Or what we should be doing now is singing at the karaoke bar at one of the beach cottages.”

Clause ellipsis. This type of ellipsis drops most of the words of the clause referred to in a previous sentence, simply retaining the question word “why,” “what,” “where,” or “how” to announce the missing parts of the clause.

A clause ellipsis that uses the question word “why”: “Most people go through life without examining their fiercely held religious and political beliefs. They blindly run their affairs based on these beliefs not knowing why […].” See how repetitious this statement becomes without the ellipsis: “Most people go through life without examining their fiercely held religious and political beliefs. They blindly run their affairs based on these beliefs not knowing why they blindly run their affairs based on these beliefs.”

A clause ellipsis that uses the question word “what”: “You’ve been asking me what I have been doing all these years. Trying to live a good life, that’s what […].” Gracelessly repetitive without the ellipsis: “You’ve been asking me what I have been doing all these years. Trying to live a good life, that’s what I have been doing all these years.”

A clause ellipsis that uses the question word “where”: “We should be able to find a place to cool off from this terrible heat. The only problem is where […].” Terribly wordy without the ellipsis: “We should be able find a place to cool off from this terrible heat. The only problem is where to find a place to cool off from this terrible heat.”    

These, then, are some of the many ways that the ellipsis can make our writing and speech more cohesive, compact, and forceful. We should use them at every opportunity to give not only greater convincing power but also a touch of elegance to our prose. (May 2, 2005)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, April 25 and May 2, 2005 © 2005 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. The essay in Part I later appeared as Chapter 70 in the book Giving Your English the Winning Edge © 2009 by Jose A. Carillo.

When there are compelling reasons for using the passive voice

Last week, I posted here an essay arguing that good writing isn’t the all-active-voice affair that our English teachers had most likely made us believe, and that there is, in fact, a perfectly valid place and role for passive-voice sentences in both our written and spoken English. That 2004 essay in my English-usage column in The Manila Times was actually followed in quick succession by two more essays enjoining writers to reexamine their acquired aversion to the passive voice. The second of those essays, “When even the passive voice is not enough,” already appeared here in a posting several months back. This time, to complete the trilogy, I am posting the third essay, “Crafting our sentences to their context,” where I recommend the use of the passive voice when there are compelling grammatical and semantic reasons to do so. (August 21, 2011)

Crafting our sentences to their context

We will further pursue my thesis in two previous essays (“In defense of the passive voice” and “When even the passive voice is not enough”) that we should not totally rely on the active voice, and that the passive voice is in itself a powerful form for precisely crafting our sentences to their context. Although the active voice is a handy default vehicle for expressing ourselves clearly, the passive voice is the only semantically correct choice if we want to call attention to the receiver of the action, to the instrument used in the action, or to the action itself.

One major virtue of the English language is, in fact, the many options it offers for constructing sentences to yield more or less the same meaning. We must keep in mind, though, that these sentences are rarely the same semantically; their shades of meaning and focus differ by appreciable degrees. To understand these differences, let’s take a look at the basic English clause pattern: “Alicia [subject, as actor] gave [verb, as the action] Roberto [indirect object, as the beneficiary] a tender hug [direct object, as the goal].” 

We already took up three ways by which the passive voice can change this basic clause pattern: (1) make the indirect object the subject of the sentence: “Roberto was given a tender hug by Alicia.”; (2) make the direct object the subject: “A tender hug was given by Alicia to Roberto.”; and (3) make the act itself the subject: “Alicia’s hugging of Roberto was tender.” The passive voice purposively diminishes the importance of the subject or actor so it can draw greater attention to the indirect or direct receivers of the action, or to the action itself.

The passive voice becomes even more useful when it is not necessary or desirable to mention the subject or doer of the action at all. In science and technical writing, for instance, the passive voice is the conventional choice because the doer of the action is often obvious, unimportant, or unknown: “An intensive search for an antidote to the raging avian flu virus is underway.” The active voice, in contrast, gives unwarranted importance to the unknown doer of the action at the expense of what’s being done, which in this case is more important. For that reason, this active-voice sentence is rabidly cockeyed indeed: “Veterinary-disease researchers intensively seek an antidote to the raging avian flu virus.”

And the passive voice, of course, is not all that rare even in journalism, the ultimate redoubt of the active voice. Take this horrible this active-voice news lead: “This reporter found out today that the complainants in the Manila electioneering case had falsified evidence.” More sensible, more logical is this passive voice construction: “The evidence in the Manila electioneering case was falsified by the complainants.”

An even more compelling reason for using the passive voice has little to do with grammar but more with the art of communication itself. It is the need for restraint, prudence, tact and diplomacy in the workplace and in our day-to-day personal interactions. The active voice is particularly unsuitable for situations where it directly and unequivocally attributes an error, mistake, or failing to someone, thus squarely putting the blame on him or her. With the passive voice, we can be scrupulously correct without pointing an accusing finger at anybody, and can deliberately keep certain things vague to let others save face.

Assume, for instance, that your advertising agency has bungled its bid for a large consumer products account, and that the reason was that, at the last minute, your immediate superior doubled the budget you had recommended. This was mainly why the prospective client chose the other agency, whose proposed budget happened to be, well, about the same as your original figures. How deliciously tempting it would be to report the fiasco straightforwardly and invoke the active-voice rule for doing so! “We lost the account because my boss insisted on doubling the proposed budget that I had strongly recommended, which of course the prospective client found excessively high. Its winning bid turned out to be only half as ours.”

The active voice here, of course, tells one painful truth that will not set you free—it is one, in fact, that’s guaranteed to instantly kill off careers and relationships. How much more politic to use the passive voice for that truth: “Our proposed budget for the advertising campaign was doubled shortly before our presentation to client, thus making it twice the bid of the agency that won the account.” Everybody in your agency would know what really happened anyway, so there’s no need to rub it in by using the active voice flagrantly.

The choice between the active voice and the passive voice, then, is not just a matter of grammar. It is at the heart of the matter of our use of the language itself. (February 10, 2004)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, February 10, 2004 © 2004 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. This essay later appeared as Chapter 68 in the book Giving Your English the Winning Edge © 2009 by Jose A. Carillo.

Shedding off the active-voice straitjacket from our English

In school, teachers of English furiously drill into the heads of their students the idea that they should always write sentences in the active voice. This creates such a strong bias—I would call it an aversion—that practically eliminates the passive voice in the English of those students even after they graduate and pursue their respective careers.

I must admit that I was one those who had acquired this bias against the passive voice, pursuing that bias like a zealot in my early writing and editing career. This was further abetted by my exposure to campus journalism and newspaper journalism, both of which demand the active voice even more relentlessly for immediacy’s sake. Later on, however, I began to sense that my predilection to writing all-active-voice sentences tended to give my narratives and expositions a mechanical, almost rubberstamp character. Then it fully dawned on me that good writing isn’t the all-active-voice affair that our English teachers had made us believe, and that there is, in fact, a perfectly valid place and role for passive-voice sentences in both our written and spoken English.

I gave vent to this realization of mine in “In Defense of the Passive Voice,” an essay that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in 2004. I am now posting it here in the hope of making more people realize as I did many years ago that although a good thing, the active voice need not be a straitjacket to our natural instinct for clear, relevant, and forceful expression. (August 14, 2011)

In defense of the passive voice

The active voice has a cult following in English grammar. This is because from grade school onwards, most everybody is taught that sentences in the subject-verb-predicate form are the be-all and end-all of English, and that the passive voice is such a weak, fuzzy, and undesirable construction to even bother using. Grammar teachers furiously drill into every student’s head that the active-voice sentence “Emilio hit Andres violently with a bat” is superior to the passive “Andres was hit violently by Emilio with a bat” or to the similarly passive “A bat was used by Emilio to violently hit Andres.” The active-voice sentence in time achieves icon status, never to be resisted or questioned. No wonder, then, that many English language users—particularly those who learn it as a second or third language—write English-language essays almost entirely in clumsy, rubberstamp active-voice sentences, and speak English like the perpetually active-voice talking robots that inhabit science-fiction movies.

The truth is that when we get down to the dynamics of language, it is difficult not to conclude that a totally active-voice essay, prose narrative, or speech is neither a practical nor a desirable goal. English that uses an unbroken train of active-voice sentences, with no passive-voice ones whatsoever, is in many ways the equivalent of speaking stridently all the time or of singing a song on a high note from start to finish. We all know how exhausting that is both to the performer and the audience. Indeed, one virtue of the passive voice is that it works to leaven such verbal performances, providing low-energy counterpoints to the high-energy semantic field created by active-voice sentences: “We danced. We sang. We caroused. But soon we were put to sleep by fatigue.”

An even more compelling reason for using passive sentences, however, is that they are the most natural and oftentimes the only logical choice for communicating certain ideas. To see how true this is, let’s go back to the active-voice sentence we used as an example above: “Emilio hit Andres violently with a bat.” Assume now that right after you have said this, someone asks for a clarification. If that person is more interested in Andres’s well-being than in Emilio’s motive for assaulting him, his question will most probably take this form: “What did you say happened to Andres?” Your answer, of course, will not be the active-voice “Emilio hit Andres violently with a bat,” which highlights what Emilio did to him. That answer will be ridiculously out of context. The only logical answer is the passive-voice “Andres was hit violently by Emilio with a bat,” which rightly highlights what happened to Andres.

Then, if your interlocutor further asks, “What instrument did you say was used?”, it definitely wouldn’t be sensible to use the same active-voice answer, “Emilio hit Andres violently with a bat.” That would be very obtuse and strange indeed! The sensible answer will be another passive-voice sentence, perhaps “A bat was used by Emilio to violently hit Andres.” Finally, your interlocutor may dun you with this question, “How would you describe the act done by Emilio against Andres?” Your answer will perhaps be more ponderous and measured this time—the way we give such replies in real life—but it will definitely be in the passive voice: “Emilio’s act of hitting Andres with a bat was done violently.”

So what does this tell us about how we should fashion our sentences? Well, it is that we should write them or say them in the most logical and natural way possible—using the active voice whenever called for, but never hesitating to use the passive when logic and good sense demands it. So, unless your English teacher forces you to stick to the active voice on pain of failing in the subject, or your editors give you a standing order never to use the passive voice or be forever assigned to doing obituaries, the active voice should only be a secondary consideration. Much more important is to emphasize the sentence elements that you want to emphasize and need to emphasize. If it is the doer of the action that needs emphasis, then by all means use the active voice. But if is the receiver of the action, the instrument used in the action, or the action itself that needs it, you really have no choice but to use the passive voice.

The active voice certainly has its virtues, chiefly that it reflects how things really happen in real life—“Someone or something does something this way or that”—but it need not be a straitjacket to our natural instinct for clear, relevant, and forceful expression. The passive voice gives us both the opportunity and the latitude to focus on what we really need to focus on, to say exactly what we mean. Our prose and our speech will be squandering that opportunity and latitude by inflexibly deferring to the cult of the active voice. (February 9, 2004)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, February 9, 2004 © 2004 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. This essay later appeared as Chapter 66 in the book Giving Your English the Winning Edge © 2009 by Jose A. Carillo.

Doing battle with the tendency to misplace participial phrases

Based on my experience as a copyeditor, I can say that easily the most serious weakness of nonnative English speakers writing in English is the tendency to misplace modifying phrases. This is true whether the writer I’m editing is an above-average student, a respected academic, an acclaimed or award-winning litterateur, or an experienced professional journalist. By the time I’m done editing their work, their digital manuscripts would often be literally bleeding with red lines or red text where I had crossed out misplaced, dangling, or squinting modifying phrases and had reconstructed entire sentences to get rid of them. Sadly, as can be seen in my weekly media English watch in this Forum, this grammar weakness is also shared in no small measure by some writers and editors of the major Philippine mass media outlets. And I would say that in most cases, the offending phrase in their narratives or expositions would be a participial phrase (definitely much more often than offending infinitive phrases and gerund phrases), thus giving me the distinct and uncomfortable feeling that the participial phrase is perhaps the least understood and most misused form of modifier in the English language.  

This was what I had mind when I wrote the two-part essay below, “Dealing better with participial phrases,” in my weekly English-usage column in The Manila Times way back in 2006. I am now posting it here to help the current generation of nonprofessional and professional writers understand why participial phrases are such slippery grammar elements to handle and how they can be effectively tamed and harnessed to produce more readable and persuasive English prose. (August 7, 2011)

Dealing better with participial phrases

Part I:

We already know that the participle is a verbal—a verb form that functions as another part of speech—that ends either in “–ing” or “–ed,” and that a participle that ends in “–ing” is a present participle (“dancing,” “remaining,” “piercing”) and one that typically ends in “–ed” is a past participle (“stalled,” “walled,” “detested”).

In both cases, the participle functions as an adjective modifying a noun, as in the following sentences: “The dancing partners impressed the audience.” “The stalled car created a monumental traffic jam.” In the first sentence, the present participle “dancing” modifies the noun “partners”; in the second, the past participle “stalled” modifies the noun “car.”

Now, a participial phrase is simply a participle together with any words or phrases that modify it. These words or phrases can be in the form of a direct object or an indirect object of the participle, a prepositional phrase, or any complement of the action or state expressed in the participle. We have to keep in mind that a participial phrase, although functioning as an adjective, retains the intrinsic properties of its basic verb.

Here, for instance, is a participial phrase consisting of a present participle and the direct object of the action expressed in it: “Throwing all caution, the legislators attempted to turn themselves into a constituent assembly.” The participial phrase in that sentence, “throwing all caution,” consists of the participle “throwing” and its direct object “all caution.” Together, they serve as an adjective modifying the clause “the legislators attempted to turn themselves into a constituent assembly.”

Now here’s a participial phrase consisting of a present participle modified by a prepositional phrase: “The traffic officer caught the motorist speeding through a red light.” The participial phrase in that sentence, “speeding through a red light,” consists of the participle “speeding” and the prepositional phrase “through a red light.” Together, they serve as an adjective modifying the noun “motorist.”

And here’s a participial phrase consisting of a past participle and a prepositional phrase that modifies it: “Soldiers confined in the barracks too long become ineffective in war.” The participial phrase in that sentence, “confined in the barracks too long,” consists of the participle “confined” and the prepositional phrase “in the barracks too long.” Together, they serve as an adjective modifying the noun “soldiers.”

Because participial phrases are, in effect, many-worded adjectives serving as modifiers, we need to exercise caution when using them in sentences. There’s always the danger of misplacing them during construction, in which case they can end up modifying a wrong word, a wrong phrase, or a wrong clause or lead to a really bad dangle or tangle.

One handy rule for dealing with a participial phrase is to make sure that the noun or pronoun it is meant to modify is clearly stated, then to place that noun or pronoun as close as possible to it. When this rule is not observed, a dangling participial phrase is the result: “Parrying the blows of his opponent, his left leg got entangled on the ropes.” This is a logically problematic construction, for a leg doing the parrying of the blows is obviously an absurd idea!

To establish the doer of the action in such situations, we have to rely on context and logic. In this particular case, it is evident that the doer of the action is the noun “boxer.” We then have to specify that noun in the sentence and position it as close as possible to the participial phrase. One construction that meets this requirement—and thus prevents the participial phrase from dangling—is this: “Parrying the blows of his opponent, the boxer got his leg entangled on the ropes.” (Another dangle-free construction, of course, is this: “The boxer, parrying the blows of his opponent, got his leg entangled on the ropes.”) (December 11, 2006)

Part II:

In their role as many-worded modifiers, participial phrases enjoy some flexibility in positioning themselves in a sentence. They do their job best when placed as close as possible to the noun or pronoun they are meant to modify: “Tired after a long day’s work, the mechanic fell asleep in the bus.” They work equally well as interrupters in a sentence: “The mechanic, tired after a long day’s work, fell asleep in the bus.” Either way, the sentence functions without a hitch because “tired after a long day’s work” is positioned right beside the noun “mechanic.”

But the third possible position for that participial phrase—at the end of the sentence—doesn’t work: “The mechanic fell asleep in the bus, tired after a long day’s work.” This time, “tired after a long day’s work” is a dangler, absurdly modifying the noun “bus.”

In certain cases, though, a participial phrase can take an end-sentence position without dangling: “The policemen found the suspect shopping at the mall.” (Here, “shopping at the mall” modifies the noun “suspect,” not “policemen.”) “The lawyers glared at the witness, shocked by her self-incriminating testimony.” (Here, “shocked by her self-incriminating testimony” modifies “lawyers,” not “witness.”)

Such end-sentence placements should be approached with caution, however. In the second construction above, in particular, the participial phrase “shocked by his self-incriminating testimony” would have dangled without the pronoun “her”: “The lawyers glared at the witness, shocked by the self-incriminating testimony.” Now we can’t tell whether it was the witness or the lawyers who were shocked by the testimony! This is because semantically, the pronoun “her” is crucial to establishing “lawyers” as the subject being modified by that participial phrase.

At any rate, from a structural standpoint, we need to observe three general rules as to when we should set off a participial phrase with commas:

(1) when it’s positioned at the beginning of a sentence,

(2) when it interrupts a sentence as a nonessential modifier, and

(3) when it’s positioned at the end of a sentence and is separated from the word it modifies.

To correctly apply Rules 2 and 3, we need to clearly distinguish between nonessential modifiers and essential modifiers. Remember now that nonessential modifiers are those whose removal won’t profoundly alter the meaning of a sentence, while essential modifiers are those whose removal will do so.

In the following sentences, the participial phrases need to be set off by commas for the statements to make sense: “The cause-oriented groups, spoiling for a showdown with the government, held a massive protest rally.” “Alicia threw a tantrum, angered by the late arrival of her date.” As proof that the participial phrase in each of the two sentences above is not essential to the statement, we can safely drop it without seriously altering the meaning of the sentence: “The cause-oriented groups held a massive protest rally.” “Alicia threw a tantrum.”

In contrast, no commas are needed for the essential participial phrases in the following sentences: “A motorist driving with an expired driver’s license faces a heavy fine.” “The necklace bought by the society matron from a respectable jeweler turned out to have fake diamonds.” Dropping the participial phrase profoundly changes the meaning of each of the statements: “A motorist faces a heavy fine.” “The necklace turned out to have fake diamonds.”

Before bringing this discussion of participial phrases to a close, we need to be aware that certain expressions derived from such participles as “considering,” “concerning,” “granting,” “speaking,” and “judging” can validly modify a clause even if that clause doesn’t have a doer of the action conveyed by the participial phrase.

Just two examples: “Considering the bad weather, the open-air concert needs to be canceled.” “Judging by first appearances, she shouldn’t even be considered in cosmetics sales.”

Because they have evolved into prepositions through long usage, such actor-less participial phrases can do their modifying job without dangling. (December 18, 2006)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, December 11 and 18, 2006 © 2006 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.