Is there a grammatical mistake in this sentence: Too much partying, his parents believed, was the cause of Sam’s poor performance at school, leading to him putting his academic record at risk. In fact, there is only one outright grammatical complaint to be made, though that might not be enough to trim the sentence nicely. …
Tag Archives: Participles
More About the Participle
We took up the topic of participles recently (What Is a Participle?), and of course there’s more to be said about this intricate linguistic device. A participle, we reminded ourselves, is an adjective built from a verb, so in the example we looked at, The speaker’s opening remarks were compelling, the participle opening is describing …
What Is a Participle?
One would think that sentences which are fairly simple in idea are also fairly simple in grammatical construction. One would think—and be surprised how often that is just not the case. Take this straightforward statement, for example: The speaker’s opening remarks were compelling. We understand the idea readily enough: someone began to speak and what …