Dangling Participials

According to Strunk and White , if you dangle your participial phrase at the beginning of a sentence, it had better refer to the grammatical subject of the sentence. An example is needed to illustrate:

Shedding fur and dander all about, Sharon chased the cats through the house.

What the author means is that the cats shed while Sharon (the subject of the sentence) chased them. To make it clear, the sentence needs rewriting something like this:

Shedding fur and dander, the cats raced ahead of Sharon.

The same rule applies even if the participial phrase begins with an adjective, preposition, or a conjunction (very popular these days). Beginning a sentence with "As" may seem mild and unassuming; however, it can lead to the ludicrous, as Strunk and White noted: "As a mother of five, with another on the way, my ironing board is always up."