Dangling Participles

Adjectives ending in -ing (and sometimes -ed) are called participles and must be used with care. Consider the following sentences:
The robber ran from the policeman, still holding the money in his hands. After being whipped fiercely, the cook boiled the egg. Flitting gaily from flower to flower, the football player watched the bee.
If you said the last sentence to the football player's face just the way it's phrased above, you could end up a bloody lump of pulp lying on the astroturf, because he might conclude you think he "flits gaily," a thing most people in his profession don't do, at least in public.
The grammatical problem here rests with the -ing and -ed words used in these sentences: "holding," "being whipped," and "flitting." They are all participles, a type of verbal form that modifies nouns. The antecedent—that is, the noun to which the participle refers—must be clear to the readers in order for them to understand what's being said. Otherwise, an action may be subscribed to the wrong player, such as "flitting" to athletes. That's called a "dangling participle," because it's left "dangling" without a clear antecedent.

http://www.usu.edu/markdamen/WritingGuide/10dangpt.htm