A couple of years ago, a columnist for the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch wrote about a remarkable trip through southwest Virginia.

“Driving down I-81 in the vicinity of Wytheville on Friday, a coyote came bounding down the interstate embankment.”

That startling experience brought to mind the time a columnist of my long acquaintance went for a stroll in New York. “Walking through Central Park,” he wrote, “my billfold somehow fell by a bench.”

Ours is a wonderful world, is it not? Literally speaking, here we have a coyote driving down an interstate in Virginia and a billfold walking through Central Park. Grammatically speaking, we also have two orphan clauses searching for a subject to adopt them. These are Deplorable Dangles, and deplorable they truly are.

Deplorable Dangles often develop when a writer feels an urgent need to escape from a syntactical rut. We have been writing paragraph after paragraph of orderly prose. Elements trot along in tandem. The verb follows the subject and everything else tags along. Thus, the cat sees the mouse. The mouse fears the cat. The dog loves the cat.

The monotony is getting to us. So we resort to an introductory phrase: “Seeing the cat, an idea occurred to the dog.” Would you like to diagram that sentence? What’s the subject? Obviously, “idea” is the subject. What’s the verb? “Occurred” is the verb. And what do you make of that prepositional phrase? Why, ma’am, “to the dog” hangs neatly from the verb. Very well, James, but isn’t there something left over?

We find homes for orphan clauses by giving them comfortable beds on which to lay their little heads: “As I was driving down I-81 in the vicinity of Wytheville, a coyote …” “While I was walking through Central Park, my billfold …” And so on.

Try your editor’s hand on these Deplorable Dangles:

• From The Washington Post, in a story about a convict just released from prison: “Walking down the street, the man’s attention wanders.”

• From the St. Augustine (Fla.) Record, in an editorial about legislation intended to preserve historic lighthouses: “Visiting the St. Augustine Lighthouse and Museum yesterday for its annual festival, the core of House Bill 733 became clear.”

• From The New York Times several years ago, in an editorial about the downfall of a French entrepreneur: “Smart, relatively young at 45 for a C.E.O., boyish looking and brash, Mr. Messer’s is a Hollywood tale …”

Readers have sent me many others. I have mislaid the credits – or the blame – but I am not making these up:

• “Originally created in Saratoga Springs, the average American consumes seven pounds of potato chips a year.”

• “Snuggled between my grandparents on the front seat, the road to Sekiu lay ahead.”

• “After alerting the Delaware County sheriff’s office, the dogs were taken to a MedVet clinic.”

The editors of Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage offer some Horrid Examples:

• Turning the corner, a handsome school building appeared.

• Flying low, a herd of cattle could be seen.

• Quickly summoning an ambulance, the corpse was carried to the mortuary.

How do we avoid the Deplorable Dangle? We read our sentences silently aloud. Thus, trying to keep things straight, dangles will disappear. Right?

James Kilpatrick is a syndicated columnist.