Editing Dangling modifier (section)

== Non-participial modifiers ==
Non-participial modifiers that dangle can also be troublesome:

<blockquote>After years of being lost under a pile of dust, Walter P. Stanley, III, left, found all the old records of the Bangor Lions Club.<ref>''Bangor Daily News'' 20 Jan 1978.  Reprinted with discussion in ''Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage'' p. 315.</ref></blockquote>

The above sentence from a photo caption in a newspaper suggests that it is the subject of the sentence, Walter Stanley, who was buried under a pile of dust, and not the records. It is the prepositional phrase "after years of being lost under a pile of dust" which dangles.

In the film ''[[Mary Poppins (film)|Mary Poppins]]'', Mr. Dawes Sr. [[death from laughter|dies of laughter]] after hearing the following joke:

<blockquote>"I know a man with a wooden leg called Smith".

"What was the name of his other leg?"</blockquote>

In the case of this joke, the placement of the participial phrase "called Smith" implies that it is the leg that is named Smith, rather than the man. ("Called Smith" is a participial phrase, as "called" is a past participle.)

Another famous example of this humorous effect is by [[Groucho Marx]] as Captain Jeffrey T. Spaulding in the 1930 film ''[[Animal Crackers (1930 film)|Animal Crackers]]'':
{{blockquote|One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I'll never know.<ref>Encarta Book of Quotations. St. Martin's Press 2000 New York. p. 616.</ref>}}
Though under the most plausible interpretation of the first sentence, Captain Spaulding would have been wearing the pajamas, the line plays on the grammatical possibility that the elephant was instead.

Certain formulations can be genuinely ambiguous as to whether the subject, the direct object, or something else is the proper affix for the participle; for example, in "Having just arrived in town, the train struck Bill", did the narrator, the train, or Bill just arrive in the town?<Ref name="economist-donaldson" /><!-- This is really only citing Donaldson, and kind of loosely as a warning.-->