(1) Mark was learning to skydive. He broke his wrist.

(2) Learning to skydive, Mark broke his wrist.

• It seems that while Mark was skydiving, he had an accident. Sentence (2) emphasizes this time relationship and also joins two short sentences in one longer one.

• Remember that in sentence (2), learning, without its helping verb was, is no longer a verb. Instead, learning to skydive refers to or modifies Mark, the subject of the new sentence.

• Note that a comma follows the introductory --ing modifier, setting it off from the independent idea.

Avoiding Confusing Modifiers

Be sure that your --ing modifiers say what you mean.

(1) Hanging my the toe from the dresser drawer, Matt found his sock.

• Probably the writer did not mean that Matt spent time hanging by his toe. What, then, was hanging by the toe from the dresser drawer?

• Hanging refers to the sock, of course, but the order of the sentence does not show this. We can clear up the confusion by turning the ideas around.

Matt found his sock hanging by the toe from the dresser drawer.

 

(2) Visiting my cousin, our house was robbed.

• Does the writer mean that our house was visiting my cousin? Who or what, then, does visiting my cousin refer to?

• Visiting seems to refer to I, but there is no I in the sentence. To clear up the confusion, we would have to add or change words.

Visiting my cousin, I learned that our house was robbed.

Resource:

Fawcett, Susan and Alvin Sandberg. Grassroots: The Writer's Workbook Fourth

      Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991.