Participles and Gerunds

Question

1. Smoking cigarettes is hazerdous to health.2. My favourite activity is reading thrillers.Is there any clear-cut to distinguish which -ing form of word is a gerund or a participle?

Vchekh · Accepted Answer

The gerund has a number of "noun" characteristics:

1. It answers the question "what?", e.g. Smoking (what?) is hazardous to health.

2. It can be used as the subject of a sentence (Smoking is hazardous), or as an object (I like swimming).

3. It can be used with prepositions, e.g. I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

4. It can be used with possessives, e.g. Your smoking in the living-room infuriates Jill.

The present participle has some adjectival and adverbial characteristics:

1. It answers the question "what kind of ... ?", e.g. developing (what kind of?) countries, shooting (what kind of?) pain, or the questions like "when?", "why?", etc., e.g. Having no money on him (why?), Jason couldn't take a taxi.

2. It is often used as an attribute (Smoking (what kind of?) women don't look attractive), as an adverbial modifier (Driving through that little town (when?), he thought it would be nice to move to a place like that some day), or predicatively (His last remark sounded grossly insulting).

Hope that helps.

P.S. Here's one oft-quoted sentence as an example: Flying planes can be dangerous.

If you mean that the act of piloting aircraft can be dangerous (i.e. it's dangerous to fly planes), then flying is a gerund.

If you mean that planes which are airborne can present a danger (i.e. planes which are flying are dangerous), then flying is a participle.

EngBB · Answer

Yay, Ill try and I think your way do make it easier, thxxxxx!

Participles and Gerunds

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