Another writng pet peeve--The fused particple

In My Humble Opinion
1

Examples:

· Betty dancing [read Betty’s dancing] is beautiful.
· If Bill and Tammy want to go skydiving, I have no objection to them trying [read their trying] it.
· With Tom having [read Tom’s having] lost three wives under mysterious circumstances, his fiancée had better watch her back.

I don’t know why fused particles bother me. They just do. I especially hated it when someone tries to correct my proper use of the possessive.

2

::must…not…point…out…the obvious::

3

:smiley: Which one, Chefguy?

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Hey, I spelled particple wrong twice.

Edit: Three times now. p - a - r - t - i - c - i - p - l - e

5

Also: w-r-i-t-i-n-g.

6

am begnnng to thnk my “” key has a problem.

7

How about your incorrect tense? (Or are you OK with people trying to correct your use of the possessive these days?)

8

Psssst: RUN! RUN NOW!!

9

No, you are right to call me on tense error. I meant to write “hate.”

10

Get a life.

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I’m trying. That’s why I am posting on an internet message board on Christmas Eve.

12

With you getting a life, I guess it’s time for me saying, “Merry Christmas!”

13

It’s a living language. There was a rule that the subject or object of a verbal noun (an infinite, a gerund, or simply a noun that expresses some verbal idea) was in the possessive. This is not to be confused with the fact that the subject or object of an infinitive used as a verb is in the objective case. As an example, in the two phrases “the city’s destruction by the army” and “the city’s destruction of the army”, the city is the object in the first case and the subject in the second.

Now those sentences are clear. But like many rules, the use is decaying with time. Frankly, I use the possessive or not in the examples of the OP and it doesn’t bother me one way or the other.

Incidentally, the examples in the OP are not participles (or particples or particles), they are gerunds.

I have mentioned this before, but I will mention it again. The use of the subjunctive is dying in the US and is essentially dead in England. I had an English copyeditor of a book I published and s/he marked several dozen places where we had used a subjunctive and s/he thought we had used a plural verb by error. Fortunately, my coauthor and I were eventually providing camera-ready copy so we made all final decisions.

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The term “fused participle” refers to both true participles and gerunds.

I also figured out why I kept misspelling “participle.” My auto-text didn’t recognize the word, and I added it in wrong. I have no excuse for the other errors, and I should have proofread.

P.S. I love the subjunctive. If I were king, I would require its proper use.

15

Don’t you mean you would require that it be used properly?

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Very.

17

Good one.
mmm

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William Safire on fused participles

On the subject of them bothering me … they don’t.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/magazine/19ONLANGUAGE.html

20

Betty dancing is beautiful.

Betty’s dancing is beautiful.

Aren’t these just two different sentences with two different meanings?

Doesn’t the first sentence mean that *the sight *of Betty dancing is beautiful and the second sentence mean that Betty’s *actual dance moves *are beautiful?

I have never heard of a fused participle before, so I fully appreciate that I might be missing something fundamental here, but it seems to me that the sentences are expressing different thoughts and that modifying the punctuation changes the intent of the expression.