The Dangling Participle

Ben Hoare — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 21:09:00 +0000

The Five Grammatical Errors That Make You Look Dumb outlined by blogger Brian Clark are indeed the five errors I most commonly see when reading blogs. In the first part of my Diary of a Storyteller, I detailed my amazement at the way the Internet allows people to establish authority as writers in spite of the careless grammatical errors they make. Brian’s post reassured me that I am not alone in being irritated by these habits.

Although by no means comprehensive, his list addresses some of the key culprits: your vs. you’re; it’s vs. its; there vs. their; affect vs. effect. But my particular favourite at the moment is the last error on Brian’s list, the dangling participle. Rather than annoying me, this one usually makes me laugh. Indeed, reading Brian’s post reminded me of one text I recently read in which the dangling participle was only too prominent. On the first page of our wedding venue brochure I read:

As well as providing your wedding breakfast, why not take out the stress of travelling to and from the church or registry office and get married at the hotel.

Such a misuse of the English language totally distorts what the writer is trying to say to the extent that, in this case, the meaning is reversed. The writer means that the hotel can deal with all aspects of the wedding so that we don’t have to. Instead, he inadvertently implies that we will be responsible for providing our own food.

Is this actually amusing, or am I just some kind of grammar geek?

Ramesh Satkurunath’s Portmanteaux

Ben Hoare — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 20:56:00 +0000

In Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, Humpty Dumpty and Alice discuss the poem, ‘Jabberwocky’. The egg explains the word “slithy”:

“Well, ‘slithy‘ means ‘lithe and slimy.’ ‘Lithe’ is the same as ‘active.’ You see it’s like a portmanteau – there are two meanings packed up into one word.”

Both before and after Lewis Carroll, what is now called the portmanteau was a common way of coining new words. James Joyce was one such coineur.

I have recently been enjoying the portmanteaux of Ramesh Satkurunath, whose blend words (as he calls them) are normally transmitted by text message before appearing on his blog. They are a joy to read. Here are some of them:

frizzen – adj. wayward hair that floats above and outside the intended style due to cold and wet conditions.

Example use: She walked into my life with bedraggled clothes and frizzen hair, and brought the storm with her.

hegemnemonic – The predominant power of one person over the memory of another.

snoozical – 1 a musical so dull it makes its audience fall asleep, 2 the sound of a snoring choir.

These are the only examples I could find on Ramesh’s blog, which must mean that some of his invented words were published only via SMS. I hope he still has them somewhere, and that he will one day bring out a dictionary with all of his invented words in. I would definitely buy it.

It should be pointed out, though, that some of these words already exist.

‘Frizzen’ is already in use, although with a different meaning. The frizzen is a curved plate of steel used in flintlock firearms, says Wikipedia. ‘Snoozical’ has been used according to Ramesh’s definition (1) in this review.

‘Hegemnemonic’ seems to be unique to Ramesh, and it’s probably my favourite out of those listed above, partly because I find it so difficult to pronounce.

My challenge is now to introduce these words to my writing vocabulary. The example use of ‘frizzen’ is inspiring (a little reminiscent of Handler) and I am sure I will have fun using it in a similar context in future.

Ben Hoare » Language

The Dangling Participle

Ramesh Satkurunath’s Portmanteaux