participle / participial phrase

A participle is a verb form that combines with an auxiliary to make a verb phrase (is sleeping, has broken) and also serves alone as a modifier. The present participle ends in -ing, and the past participle ends in -ed or takes an irregular form such as frozen: the rusted lock, the waiting clerk, a frozen pipe. A participial phrase is that form plus its objects or modifiers: rusted shut from the rain. Put the phrase next to the word it describes.

An opening participial phrase attaches to the subject of the main clause: Checking the receipt, Greg found a second charge. When that subject does not perform or undergo the action the participle names, the phrase is a dangling participle, which is a kind of dangling modifier: it attaches to the wrong word, and the sentence says something the writer did not mean. Participles that serve as prepositions, such as considering, given, and including, need no subject to describe: Given the forecast, the race was postponed.

A present participle places its action at the time of the main verb or just before it; when the action was finished earlier, use having plus the past participle: Having sold the house in May, the Ruiz family moved in July, not Selling the house in May, the Ruiz family moved in July.

See also dangling modifier; misplaced modifier; participial phrases: comma use; gerund / present participle.