English poll!

[rowyn]

[Poll #1981252]

I have already overthought this question, so I'm not going to explain the background unless someone asks me to in the comments. I'm just curious what instinctive sense other people have on it.

Comments

[whitefangedwolf.livejournal.com]

My understanding is that a participle becomes a dangling participle when it is not supposed to target the subject of the sentence.

In the sentence, "Mary walked over to the boy, laughing at the joke", the participle, "laughing", targets the subject, "Mary", so the sentence can be rearranged as "Mary, laughing at the joke, walked over to the boy" without changing the meaning. If the boy was supposed to be laughing, then "laughing" is a dangling participle. In that case, removing the comma makes the sentence "Mary walked over to the boy laughing at the joke", which attaches "laughing" to "boy" instead of "Mary".

[rowyn]

Yep, this appears to be the general understanding. Not sure where the USU page was coming from on this one.