The teacher was working on grammar with her class.  “If I say that I have went, is that correct or incorrect?”

“Incorrect!” the children responded.

“And why is it incorrect?” the teacher asked.

Little Timmy replied, “Because you haven’t went yet!”

Pity any person learning English as a second language.  Even we native speakers get tripped up by all the exceptions to the rules.  When not every past tense of a verb ends in some derivative of ed, it can take a few years during childhood to get the irregulars nailed down.

Such tots are often depicted as using words like bited or drawed, but a few usages do continue to plague some folks into adulthood.  Lay and lie are probably the biggest culprits.  There are people who still wonder “Do I lay down when I go to bed?”  Well, that depends.  Are you going to lie down now?  Or did you lay down last night?

Set and sit are their relatives, but less troublesome.  At least sit doesn’t have set as a past tense.

Since we’re in the holiday season, the most hilarious line in that song about the Grinch (the cartoon version) claims the three words that best describe him are stink – stank – stunk.  But don’t get any ideas it’s correct to say think – thank – thunk.

Using the word hang in the past tense is also dependent on whether its subject is animate or inanimate.  Somebody hung that picture last century, but after he was caught horse thieving, he got hanged … which made him inanimate.

It seems fitting to wrap this up with another joke:

Father was disappointed after looking over his son’s report card.  “If you had a little more spunk, your grades would be better.  Do you know what spunk means?”

“Sure, Dad, it’s the past participle of spank.”

I’ve got a million of them, although quantity doesn’t mean quality….

While scanning the article, the dangling modifier caught her eye.

You saw that, right?  The way the words are arranged in the preceding sentence, it sounds like an alien creature tried to pluck someone’s peepers while scanning an article.  And although the dangling modifier, also known as a dangling participle, can inject alien influence into a sentence, it’s also an easy fix.

In general the inappropriate word or phrase doesn’t actually refer the word it’s intended to modify.  Sometimes the word it meant to refer to doesn’t even appear in the sentence, which is an easy slip because the writer has the subject firmly in mind, but the words don’t come out the way they’re supposed to.  For instance:

With a glance at the gamboling goats, the gate closed.

Obviously gates don’t glance at goats and close themselves.  The farmer who actually carried out these activities fell out of the sentence.  And writers usually fall into that error because they’re trying to mix up sentence structure beyond the subject-predicate-object arrangement.

As stated, it’s easy enough to fix.  The first sentence can be:  While scanning the article, she noticed the dangling modifier.

And the capricious caretaker can receive his credit:  With a glance at the gamboling goats, the farmer closed the gate.

Making modifications to the wrong subject can cause hilarity as well as confusion.  When you look over the following examples, notice the twisted image they present, and then determine how to right their wrongs:

Hungry after the long hike, the sandwich was eaten with relish.

Having finished the romantic meal, the radio was turned on.

Drinking a glass of wine, the chicken tasted even better.

Disappointed, the woolly sheep could not be shorn.

Bedraggled but expensive, she decided not to buy the rooster.

Keeping those modifiers from dangling isn’t hard, although they can slip in when you least expect it.  Pay attention to those words and how they influence each other.  It just goes to show that by reviewing the writing, the error becomes clear.

You saw that, right…?