Dec 05 2008
How to edit - “ing” words
Continuing our editing process, the next thing you may need to search for is “ing”.
Searching for words ending in “-ing” covers two common mistakes.
One is incorrect use of the construction “doing one thing, he did another”. For instance, you’ll often see sentences like, “Buttoning his shirt, he followed her” or “Throwing her bag over her shoulder, she set off for work”. This construction can only describe two things happening at exactly the same time.
The trouble is, many writers use it to describe two things happening one after the other, e.g. “Putting down his coffee cup, he walked through the door.” Now, readers may not be able to tell you what’s wrong with that sentence, but they will have a moment’s confusion before their brain works out what it means and creates a mental picture. It’s clearly impossible for him to put his coffee cup down and walk through the door at exactly the same time, and that momentary confusion will make the reader uncomfortable. Make your reader uncomfortable too often and they’ll stop reading, even if they can’t tell you why.
Quite often, writers resort to this construction because they’re trying to avoid starting sentences with “He” or “She”. It’s clumsy and unnecessary. Contrary to what some people may have told you, there is absolutely nothing wrong with starting a sentence with “He” or “She”. What you should avoid is several sentences in a row, all starting the same way. So if you have a sentence starting with “She”, the next sentence should start with something else. Then the following sentence can start with “She” again.
