There’s no grammar rule saying you can’t start a sentence with an -ing word. But when you overuse them, the cadence of your writing will be verbose and slow. Look at this example of a paragraph that uses multiple -ing words to start sentences: Taking the hint, I said goodbye. Opening the door, she wished me a nice day.

Starting a sentence with an "-ing" word is grammatically correct. But inexperienced writers tend to start too many sentences with "-ing" words, which makes their writing repetitive and dull or can lead to a confusing sentence structure. For instance: Taking the hint, I said goodbye. Opening the door, she wished me a nice day.

USING -ING OPENERS CORRECTLY In order to use correctly the -ing opener to improve your sentence variety, make sure you follow two rules: Put a comma after the introductory group of words that contains the -ing word. Tell who or what performs the action of the -ing word within the first few words after the comma.

Some verbs can be followed by the -ing form OR the to-infinitive form without a big change in meaning: begin, continue, hate, intend, like, love, prefer, propose, start I like to play tennis. / I like playing tennis. It started to rain. / It started raining.