Danglers

I’m surprised at people who don’t know the rule about danglers. I suppose it’s a bit like the offside rule in football. I must admit I don’t understand that one, but as I’m not interested in football I’ve never bothered to find out. Danglers though… if you’re a writer, that seems an important one to know.

I saw another example here yesterday:

After moving to a 5-2 lead in the decider, Murray played the game of his life to break to love and then held another three break points at 5-5.

It looks okay – if you don’t know about tennis, that is. If you do, it doesn’t make any sense because, if Murray had been leading 5-2, he wouldn’t have needed to win any more games to get to 5-5. No, it was Djokovic who was leading 5-2.

When I gave a presentation on editing, I created this slide about danglers: