What occurs when a sentence’s participle phrase misleads by appearing to modify the wrong subject?

A dangling participle occurs when a participle phrase is not clearly linked to the noun or pronoun it is intended to modify. This results in a sentence that can mislead the reader by implying that a different subject is associated with the action described in the participle phrase. For example, in the sentence "Running down the street, the car almost hit me," the participle phrase "Running down the street" seems to modify "the car," which creates confusion since cars do not run. Instead, it's the person who is running.

The concept of a dangling participle highlights the importance of clarity in writing. It emphasizes the need for authors to ensure that their modifiers are placed close to the words they are meant to modify, thereby avoiding ambiguity. In contrast, the other options such as oxymoron, code-switching, and formative assessment serve different functions and do not pertain to the issue of misleading modification within a sentence.