The Havok of Dangling Participles
As I spoke of in my last post, I try not to fall into the trap of dangling participles. Though I am sure that I do occasionally. Accessibility concerns itself with cognitive load as well as direct access issues. If someone in need cannot understand our directions then it falls on us to better explain and do so in greater detail. Some dangling participles are deceptively coherent sounding. I suppose there is some merit in accepting that as long as the message is delivered satisfactorily and matches the perspective you are trying to invoke, then “no harm, no foul” tends to kick in. That said, it’s a slippery slope to letting your guard down when it matters. I will offer up a few examples to show how we can lose meaning or present multiple ideas in one sentence, and allow for unwanted bias to ruin our sentence.
1. The obvious one
Example: Running down the street, the flowers looked beautiful.
Intent: To say that while we were running down the street we saw some beautiful flowers.
Result: The flowers looked beautiful running down the street.
Adjustment: Running down the street, I saw that the flowers looked beautiful.
Avoidance: I saw some beautiful flowers while running down the street.
I hope to impart that avoidance is the better and more concise option. It is nearly the same length as the original and does not suffer the same confusion of seeing a bouquet jogging itself down the street. Now this is an extreme example to illustrate the point so let’s get a little more ambiguous in the next example.
2. The understandable near miss
Example: Typing on the computer, the document was finished.
Intent: We were typing on the computer and finished the document we were working on.
Result: The document itself was done typing on the computer.
Adjustment: Typing on the computer, I finished the document.
Avoidance: I finished typing the document on the computer.
Again, here you can easily see what we were attempting to say and would most likely give a pass and keep on reading the paragraph that follows. You might judge, but you understand the intended meaning and resolve to get on with your day. We could choose to adjust and finish with a full sentence, or as noted before we could choose the path of avoidance. Avoidance keeps the sentence concise, remains properly associated, and lowers the cognitive load on the reader. three wins for the price of one.
3. Let’s get more topical and ambiguous
- When the date is being filled, the format must be correct.
- While reviewing the form, any errors should be corrected.
- Upon submitting the form, confirmation will be sent.
I want you to take a moment and slow down here. I also suffer from reading too quickly and must remind myself to take a beat. I am changing up the format here a bit to maybe help with that. I have offered up here, 3 participles dangling. I would like you to think about how they might be better arranged. and go through the steps I did above. Let’s look at intent, the potential resulting confusion, any adjustment we might be able to make, and finally an attempt at avoidance.
Here’s a bit of a rubric to follow, throw it in a notepad or your own choice of writing application, or heck even jump down into the comments if you are feeling froggy and let everyone know what you think the best solution is.
Example:
Intent:
Result:
Adjustment:
Avoidance:
Now all of these are mostly readable as long as you have plenty of surrounding context to go along with them. Once you have given it some thought move on to the next section.
4. Discussion
For the first one, it’s safe to assume that we just want the correct format for the date, but we could be more explicit. Which format should the date be in, US or European standard? It’s also odd to think of it being while the field is filled out and not after it’s completed. Just feels off, right? Now we could say “The date should be filled out with the US standard format. (mm/dd/yyyy)” in the error message. It is clear, concise, and offers an example most users are familiar with.
For the second one, the missing info is the who. Does this sentence mean:
A). That the user should take care to fill out the form correctly and check for any mistakes in a quick review session before submitting
B). That the form will be reviewed for them and and corrections should be made on their behalf.
C). The computer should update anything it finds as an error before allowing you to submit.
If you are a user that thinks there is going to be a final review session built into the workflow then you may not take as much care as you need to. So we need to be clear that it is their duty to review the contents of the form before sending it in.
For the third one, we are missing a where piece of context.
Will the confirmation be sent back out to the user or the system administrator? they most likely will expect a confirmation to be showing up in their email with a tracking number. We should provide clarity here. When you submit the form, you will receive a confirmation email.
It may not seem like much, but avoiding confusion can be very difficult, and having someone proofread is a huge step toward seeing how the reader will most likely understand what you are trying to say. Look out for dangling participles (and poor wandering lost commas) they can cause not only misunderstanding but confidence in that misunderstanding that may lead you to more trouble in the end.
5. Concluding
Wrapping this all back to accessibility is the ultimate concern for each of my articles. So, on that note, one of the goals of accessibility is to lower the cognitive load for users who need to use the services being provided. Dangling participles usually suffer from a simple lack of context and need a bit more clarity to confirm their intent. They sometimes work just fine in a train of thought speech pattern, because they are usually indicative of a pause to think through and continue to build on the ample context that lead up to that moment. When trying to be succinct and as direct as possible when giving directions, we must remember to speak plainly and with adequate detail. Now go forth, and hunt for participles that dangle unnecessarily.
