Page:The king's English (IA kingsenglish00fowlrich).pdf/126
Being much interested in the correspondence bearing on the question 'Do we believe?', the first difficulty arising in my mind is...—Daily Telegraph.
My farm consisted of about twenty acres of excellent land, having given a hundred pounds for my predecessor's good will.—Goldsmith.
3. Mere unattached participles for which nothing can be said, except that they are sometimes inoffensive if the word to be supplied is very vague.
Doubling the point, and running along the southern shore of the little peninsula, the scene changes.—F. M. Crawford.
The most trying...period was this one of enforced idleness waiting for the day of entry.—Times.
Having acquired so many tropical colonies there is the undoubted duty attached to such possession of...—Times.
4. Participles that may some day become prepositions, &c.
Sr—Referring to your correspondent's (the Bishop of Croydon's) letter in to-day's issue, he quotes at the close of it the following passage.—Daily Telegraph.
He must be the Bishop; for the immediately preceding Sir, marking the beginning of the letter, shows that no one else has been mentioned; but if we had given the sentence without this indication, no one could possibly have believed that this was so; referring is not yet unparticipled.
5. An unwary writer sometimes attaches a participle to the subject of a previous sentence, assuming that it will be the subject of the new sentence also, and then finds (or rather is not awake enough to find) himself mistaken. This is a trap into which good writers sometimes fall, and so dangerous to bad writers that we shall give many examples. It is important for the tiro to realize that he has not satisfied the elementary requirements of grammar until he has attached the participle to a noun in the same sentence as itself, not in another. He must also remember that, for instance, I went and he came, though often spoken of loosely as a sentence, is in fact as fully two sentences as if each half of it were ten lines long, and the two were parted by a full stop and not connected by a conjunction.