How to avoid talking elephants. Fixing faulty introductory phrases

I wonder how many of us have ever asked our readers to believe in talking elephants:

While talking with a friend, an elephant trumpeted. 

Or dancing coral reefs:

Dancing on Friday, the coral reef sprung back into my memory.

Or imagine fruit-eating lions:

While eating fruit on my patio, a lion walked past.

Or binocular-using whales:

Looking though my binoculars, a whale came into view.

I wonder…

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You see, we often start sentences with introductory phrases, and one type of introductory phrase is the type that begins with a word ending in “-ing” or begins with “while” and then a word ending in “-ing”. Consider this sentence:

Looking at the sky, an unusual cloud floated past.

Or this slight variation: While looking at the sky, an unusual cloud floated past.

But when we use introductory phrases like this, there’s a grammar principle we need to keep in mind: The person or thing nearest the introductory phrase is understood to be the person or thing that performs the action in the introductory phrase. In the above sentence, the nearest “person or thing” to the introductory phrase is “cloud”. Therefore, “cloud” is understood to be “looking at the sky”. Oh dear!

Unfortunately, it’s often easy to write a sentence like our example without noticing this flaw. But we certainly don’t want our readers to think we’re talking about a “sun” that can “drive”:

Driving past the shop, the sun was reflected in the shop windows.

Or “wind”  that can “fall” from a table:

While falling from the table, the wind blew the papers around the room.

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So, it seems we need a couple of ways to write these sentences properly.

Here’s our grammar principle: The person or thing nearest the introductory phrase is understood to be the person or thing that performs the action in the introductory phrase. Therefore, we need to re-write our flawed sentences by placing the correct “person or thing” immediately before or after the introductory phrase. I’ll quickly show you what that looks like so that you’ll have a clear path to perfect sentences.

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Solution 1: Immediately After

Insert the correct “person or thing” and a suitable verb immediately after the introductory phrase (find these edits underlined), and make any other edits necessary to keep the sentence working properly (find these edits italicised).

Flawed sentence: Looking at the sky, an unusual cloud floated past.

Fixed sentence: Looking at the sky, I saw an unusual cloud float past.

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Flawed sentence: Driving past the shop, the sun was reflected in the shop windows.

Fixed sentence: Driving past the shop, she noticed that the sun was reflected in the shop windows.

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Flawed sentence: While falling from the table, the wind blew the papers around the room.

Fixed sentence: While falling from the table, the papers were blown around the room by the wind.

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Solution 2: Immediately Before

Insert “while” and the correct “person or thing” immediately before the introductory phrase (find these edits underlined), and make any other edits necessary to keep the sentence working properly (find these edits italicised).

Flawed sentence: Looking at the sky, an unusual cloud floated past.

Fixed sentence: While I looked at the sky, an unusual cloud floated past.

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Flawed sentence: Driving past the shop, the sun was reflected in the shop windows.

Fixed sentence: While she drove past the shop, the sun was reflected in the shop windows.

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Flawed sentence: While falling from the table, the wind blew the papers around the room.

Fixed sentence: While the papers were falling from the table, the wind blew them around the room.

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There we go! Those are two failsafe ways to write those sentences. 

Just make sure you’re never telling your readers about prancing goldfish (Prancing around the room, my goldfish watched me dance.) or singing rain (While singing in the street, the rain started to pour.). 

Avoid these forevermore, and you won’t be pushing your readers’ beliefs quite so much.

There we go, that’s it from me for this week. Let me give you one last reminder of the grammar rule we’re dealing with: The person or thing nearest the introductory phrase is understood to be the person or thing that performs the action in the introductory phrase.

And I’ll be watching the comments section, ready to answer any questions you have. Have a great week.

And for lots more grammar pointers, check out My Big Blog Directory.

But if you’d like some entertainment instead, take a look at Glimpses—my free book of short stories.