Don't Dangle Your Participles in Public

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:27 PM -0800 3/23/04, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>That's the title of one of Richard Lederer's syndicated columns on the
>English language, which I came across on page 19 of the March 2004
>Funny Times (a Cleveland, Ohio, compendium of recent humorous cartoons
>and essays, with what now counts as a way-left tinge to its politics).
>Yes, like Lederer's columns in general, it's supposed to be funny --
>he's fond of puns and other kinds of word play -- but it's also
>supposed to be instructive.  (Lederer is, after all, an English
>professor.)
>
Indeed.  Words to, or at least from, the wise, as always from Arnold.
Lederer is an interesting case.  His children include two world-class
poker players, Howard Lederer and Annie Duke (as I learned from James
McManus's great memoir, _Positively Fifth Street_); Annie advanced
farther (ninth place, I believe) than any other woman in the annual
World Series of Poker.  Another sibling, Katie Lederer, a poet and
author of the earlier _Winter Sex_, recently published her own memoir
of what it was like growing up with a father who was a boarding
school English teacher who writes humorous and/or prescriptive
language books on the side, a mother whose main joys in life were
scotch and crossword puzzles, and two professional poker playing
siblings.   Her book on the Lederer tribe is called, of course,
_Poker Face_ (Crown, 2003).

larry horn