: Re: Shifting Tense and Commas in Writing I received some critiques on my writing where the reader indicated it read fine but there was just something off about my tense. However, he couldn't put

@Debbie451

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The problem is not verb tenses. The problem is subject placement. You don't quite have a dangling participle, because there is no other person being discussed who could be shaking his or her head nor is there any non-person being assigned the head-shaking by accident, but the sentence reads awkwardly.

Starting a sentence with an adverb and gerund is problematic. It's not impossible, but it's hard to do. I appreciate that you want to vary sentence structure, so try something more like this:

He walked to the store and noted the banners, but they weren't worth making a fuss about. With a disapproving shake of his head, he continued onward.

Move some of the context (the banners) to the previous sentence so it's not weighing down the opening clause, and then rewrite the parts of speech so they flow a bit more. It's still inverted and still not He did this and then he did that, but you aren't struggling to figure out whose head is shaking.

Separately, when you have a gerund phrase like that, it describes continuous action. Make sure that you describe actions in the order they occur.

He goes to the store.
He sees the banners.
He shakes his head in disapproval.
He continues on.

Shaking his head describes a situation where 3 and 4 are happening at the same time. This is fine as long as you structure the sentences to reflect that.

He walked to the store and noted the banners, but they weren't worth making a fuss about. He continued onward, shaking his head in disapproval.

This describes him walking (continuing) away from the store without having stopped, but after he sees the banners and while he is walking, he's shaking his head.

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