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Does the second sentence begin with dangling participle?

Event X is here. Three years in the making, now it’s your chance to shine at our epic event.

One definition of a dangling participle is "a modifier that doesn't seem to modify anything." I think "three years in the making" might be considered a modifier, so it needs to be close to what it modifies, which is Event X.

How can the sentence be fixed?

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    Answers go in the answer box, not the comment box. This question has been locked against further comments because answers were being inappropriately given by community members in comments that are now deleted.
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented Jul 25, 2022 at 15:34

7 Answers 7

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You want to get rid of the awkwardness. And this is supposed to be dramatic.

How about:

Event X is here.
Three years in the making.
This is your chance to shine.

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  • Yes, whether it's a 'dangling participle' or not, I'd separate it from the final independent clause. Trying to get pauses right, I'd perhaps use 'Event X is here ... three years in the making. Now it’s your chance to shine at our epic event.'
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Jul 26, 2022 at 9:49
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    But now it's a fragment. Lacking a finite verb, "three years in the making" can't stand as a full sentence.
    – OpenAI was the last straw
    Commented Jul 26, 2022 at 13:49
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    @AndrewRay Marketing slogans do not require full, sentences.
    – Lambie
    Commented Jul 26, 2022 at 14:39
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    @Lambie True. If indeed this is for a marketing slogan, it's fine, except that I wouldn't put a period/full stop after it. If this is for an invitation, I would not expect to see a fragment. OP doesn't say.
    – OpenAI was the last straw
    Commented Jul 26, 2022 at 14:44
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Does the second sentence begin with dangling participle?

No.

How can it be fixed?

It doesn't need fixing

Three years in the making, = It has been [t]hree years in the making. = it has taken three years of preparation.

"making" is a gerund.

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    That's right. This is a measure phrase (hence a noun phrase) that's been left-dislocated from the very end of the sentence for reasons of emphasis instead of being used with whiz-deletion at the end as one would normally expect. The CMU parser cannot figure out the linkage after the dislocation. Whether actual humans stumble on the same thing as the algorithm did is not for me to guess.
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented Jul 25, 2022 at 16:19
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    Because you didn't write out whole thing, I ignored yours since the dangling, non-dangling requires a context.
    – Lambie
    Commented Jul 25, 2022 at 16:23
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Solution:

  • Event X is here. Three years in the making, now it delivers your chance to shine at our epic event.

Problem:

Event X is here. Three years in the making, now it’s your chance to shine at our epic event.

The event is what was three years in the making. The it's following the opening phrase has the dummy subject it and does not directly refer to the event. Yet it needs to, or the reader is left hanging: "What is three years in the making? My chance is?"

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    I think this is the real problem with the sentences. You can't hang an appositive off of an expletive pronoun.
    – OpenAI was the last straw
    Commented Jul 26, 2022 at 13:44
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The fact that it has been three years in the making and that it gives people the chance to shine are two facts that relate to the event but are otherwise unrelated. I'm not convinced that they have to share a sentence. You could put the former into the first sentence instead.

  • [Event name] is here, after three years in the making. Now it’s your chance to shine at our epic event.

  • After three years in the making, [Event name] is here. Now it’s your chance to shine at our epic event.

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  • You've got a point here; +1 for raising the question. However, a relation can be found in the OP's sentence: The epic event has been three years in the making so it is serious enough for you to find matter in it to apply your skills to, and shine.
    – LPH
    Commented Jul 26, 2022 at 15:28
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Sample: Event X is here. Three years in the making, now it’s your chance to shine at our epic event.

Three years in the making is a dangling modifier as it does not refer to Event X.

Three years in the making, Event X is here. Now it’s your chance to shine at our epic event. [no dangling, as it refers to Event X]

But I have to say that Dan's answer is best and the most catchy. I was merely showing the grammar.

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  • Event X is here. Three years in the making, now it’s your chance to shine at our epic event. (I thought of changing it to: "Three years in the making, this epic event is your chance to shine," but I don't think that quite works.)

First of all there is no participle in the phrase "in the making", and the use of an article before "making" makes that quite explicit. In this construction "making" is a noun.

(Collins) making (meɪkɪŋ IPA Pronunciation Guide ) plural makings

  1. uncountable noun
    The making of something is the act or process of producing or creating it.
    • ...Salamon's book about the making of this movie. [+ of]
    • Ducks' eggs are particularly prized for cake making.
    Synonyms: creation, production, manufacture, construction

"In the making" in this phrase should not be confused with "in the making" meaning "becoming".

(Collins) in the making phrase If you describe a person or thing as something in the making, you mean that they are going to become known or recognized as that thing.
• Her drama teacher is confident Julie is a star in the making.
• I think it's a disaster in the making.
Synonyms: budding, potential, up and coming, emergent

So, if something is dangling, it can't be but the modifier "three years in the making". Here is a characterization of dangling modifiers.

(Yourdictionary) A modifier changes, alters, limits, or adds more information about something else in the sentence. Ideally, a modifier comes right before or right after the word it modifies. When that other word is missing, the modifier becomes a dangling modifier, making the sentence unclear.

(Scribbr) A modifier describes or qualifies another part of a sentence. A dangling modifier occurs when the intended subject of the modifier is missing from the sentence, and instead another subject appears in its place.

Dangling modifiers often take the form of an introductory phrase that is connected to the wrong thing.

(CoGEL Unattached nonfinite and verbless clauses) § 15.59 It is considered to be an error when the understood subject of the clause is not identifiable with the subject of the matrix clause, and perhaps does not appear in the sentence at all.
• *Reading the evening paper, a dog started barking.
• Reading the evening paper, he heard a dog that had started barking.

(grammaring),

As what is being modified is "this epic", and this noun phrase is not the subject of the matrix clause, then, according to the definition, the phrase "three years in the making" is a dangling modifier, but the modification envisaged by the OP does remove this problem and would seem to make the sentence a fully correct one.

This is so because this modifier can be considered as a participial clause from which the participle (past perfect participle "having been") is ellipted, "epic" being its implied subject.

  • Having been (for) three years in the making, this epic …

  • Three years in the making, this epic event is your chance to shine.

Sentences with the same construction can be found in the literature. Some instances are found below.

(ref. 1, 2016) Three years in the making, and already covered elsewhere in these pages, The Song Remains The Same finally made it to movie theatres in both the US and UK.

(ref. 2, 1997) Three years in the making, the reassessment evaluated possible health effects from exposure to dioxin, including cancer, reproductive, developmental, immune system, enzyme induction, hormone, and endocrine effects.

(ref. 3, 2016) Three years in the making, Peachtree Golf Club in Atlanta opened nine holes in October 1947 and the additional nine in July 1948.

(ref. 4, 1937) Two years in the making, it includes every penny in the Lincoln series, and every one shines.

(ref. 5, 1994) Two years in the making, Enterprise Objects Framework essentially puts a buffer between NextStep object-oriented developers and relational databases like those from Oracle Corp. and Sybase, Inc., which generate the necessary SQL ...

(ref. 6, 2010) Four years in the making, it is a vindication of the team's hard fought and close second place finish at last year's State Championship and a testament to the spirit of the team.

(ref. 7, 2002) Four years in the making, this album does not disappoint.

(ref. 8, 1997) Five years in the making, Forever finds Brown at his creative peak.

(ref. 9, 2013) Almost five years in the making, the Special Public Hygiene Regulation (1873)
                    Sex, War, and Disease in the Tropics [55]
was a reflection of the state of both international and domestic debates on the issue of prostitution, public health, and social order in the mid-nineteeth century.

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  • Yes, making is quite clearly a noun here, as evidenced by the use of the. I don’t know why some people think it’s a participle or a gerund, but I suspect they’re using far more casual definitions of those respective terms than one would wish for, perhaps ones based on morphology alone rather than on syntax. If it were an actual gerund then you would be able to say either ❌ in the making better movies or ❌ in the making movies better, but you cannot say those because both are ungrammatical; it would have to be in the making of better movies, connecting two NPs with a preposition.
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented Jul 26, 2022 at 14:25
  • @tchrist Most likely, they have not yet become aware to any significant extent of the importance of grammar.
    – LPH
    Commented Jul 26, 2022 at 14:31
  • It is a dangling modifier.
    – Lambie
    Commented Jul 26, 2022 at 14:43
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    Agree with @Lambie. You're missing the forest for the trees here. Sure, it's not a participle, but it's still dangling, since its referent is nowhere to be found in the rest of the sentence. Saying "no, it's not a dangling participle because it's not a participle," is technically true, but misses the point of the question.
    – OpenAI was the last straw
    Commented Jul 26, 2022 at 14:47
  • "in the making" is a prepositional phrase introduced by the prep. "in"; necessarily, it modifies a noun phrase, which has to be "three years". So the modifier is "three years in the making", not "making". The noun "making" could be some other one that has no ing-ending, as in this sentence: "Three years in preparation , The Love Wagon was a completely New Jersey work, artistically, creatively, financially, and in terms of production.". (google.fr/books/edition/Past_and_Promise/…) (1/2)
    – LPH
    Commented Jul 26, 2022 at 15:19
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It's a disjointed mess, the kind of marketing mishmash that gets spat out by committee. It links "three years in the making" with the subject, "you," so it makes no sense. Call it a dangling participle, a disjointed subject, whatever, it's bad.

It can be easily fixed:

"Three years in the making, this epic event is your chance to shine."

(However the heck people would "shine" at an "epic event". Is it an open mic night?)

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