Some random thoughts about hurt people and dictionaries

We can often use participles (usually ending in -ed or -ing) as adjectives. A present participle (-ing form) usually has an active meaning and a past participle (3rd form) usually has a passive meaning:

• The winning team was cheered loudly by its supporters.
  = the team which won - active meaning
• The players of the defeated team looked exhausted.
  = the team that was defeated - passive meaning

In this post, I'm interested in one particular pair of adjectives made from past participles (PPs): injured and hurt.

Exploring misplaced and dangling modifiers

This is my attempt to get to grips with the subject of misplaced and dangling modifiers. I freely admit to being at the edge of my comfort zone here, and to not necessarily knowing all the answers. But although my opinions may be a bit wobbly, I don't think I've made any huge errors.

This is quite a detailed exploration, so you might want to dip in and out rather than take it all in at one sitting.

We will look at the following aspects using the occasional exercise for illustration:

• What is a modifier?
• The placing of modifiers
• Is it misplaced or simply dangling?
• Misplaced modifiers, and how to avoid them
• Different types of dangling modifiers
• Dangling participles, and how to fix them
• Identifying dangling modifiers
• What is a squinting modifier?
• Some natural sounding danglers
• Two case studies from language blogs

Participles and participle clauses

• Participles as adjectives
• Participle clauses after certain conjunctions and prepositions
• Participle clauses after object complements with certain verbs
• Participle clauses after there is, there are
• Reduced relative clauses
• Adverbial participle clauses

Tip - this is quite a mammoth lesson, so you might want to do it in stages. (It was certainly a bit of a marathon writing it!)