Ignorance is Bliss II

The previous post described how a correction, even a quasi-erroneous one, can leave a lasting imprint on writing style. But a split infinitive is a mirthless solecism compared to the mockery—a cruelly effective pedagogical tool—the dangling modifier is supposed to engender. Again, given my education, which eschewed the stuffy business of teaching of “correct” usage, I became aware of the jeopardy posed by stranded participles only after an offender was brought to task. In this case, the offender was fictional.

In John Updike’s The Witches of Eastwick, a member of his suburban coven, Sukie Rougemont, has produced a gossip piece for the local rag. The reaction from her friends is less than rapturous:

“Well, honey, it had color, but you do run on a bit and honestly—now don’t be offended—you must watch your participles. They dangle all over the place.”

Indeed, Sukie’s infelicitous prose (did Updike wince slightly while sabotaging his usual flawless style?) does showcase a classic example of a dangling participle inadvertently conveying a ridiculous image:

Constructed circa 1895 in a brick English style, with a symmetrical façade and massive chimneys at either end, the new proprietor hopes to convert his acquisition to multiple usages…

Of course, the new proprietor was not constructed in a brick English style. A sentence such this falls in line with the comical botches usage guides have typically trotted out to buttress their arguments. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of Usage goes as far to speculate that “funny examples have apparently been invented for the purpose of illustration. Actual dangling modifiers are more often of such a nature as to excite little mirth; indeed, they may hardly be noticeable except to practising rhetorician or usage expert.”

Case in point is a line from a recent Economist article on Ireland’s upcoming poll on the Lisbon referendum: “What of the second referendum on Lisbon this autumn? Looking at the polls, a Yes vote is widely expected.”

Reading this sentence according to the “rules,” we could quibble that a Yes vote would be unlikely to look at a poll. But that underrated tool for interpreting text—a degree of sanity—allows us to overlook the supposedly inappropriate modifier. If the result does not, for example, imply that a man was built from brick in the late 19th-century, it seems that a dangler can be easily swallowed, even by readers who can recognize one. Despite this commonsense approach, some of us still chaperone our participles with paranoid vigilance: we either struggle to parachute in phantom subjects (“Looking at the polls, most observers expect a Yes vote”) or groan in shame when discovering outbreaks in our own writing.