Am I paraphrasing this right?

Question

Along the way, he found his mother's lost purse and leaving his stuff behind, he ran to the purse.

This is not an original sentence but has the same structure. I think there are two points that make this sentence quite awkward (although my English native coworker find this ok): (1) the expression "leaving something behind" and (2) the redudant 2nd purse.

(1) leaving sth behind

I think the expression should be used like

Along the way, he found his mother's lost purse, leaving his stuff behind, and ran to the purse.

or

Along the way, he found his mother's lost purse and ran to the purse, leaving his stuff behind.

(2) redundancy

Since the second "purse" is redundant, I think

Along the way, he found and ran to his mother's lost purse, leaving his stuff behind.

is a better sentence.

What do you think about the revisions I made? Did they make sense or did I make it worse?

Thank you!

Answer 1

The original sentence seems best to me. It keeps the events in the order they occur: 1) He saw the purse; 2) he left his stuff behind; 3) he ran to the purse. Your second and third revisions change the order of the parts, which isn't wrong, but writers are usually advised to keep things in a logical order as much as possible so the reader doesn't have to backtrack.

Your first revision, by moving the and, makes the clause "leaving his stuff behind" modify the verb "found". This only works if the events happen at the same time. Since one is a consequence of the other, we can't imply that.

The original sentence, however, does need a comma to be grammatical. Here's one way it could be done:

Along the way, he found his mother's lost purse, and, leaving his stuff behind, he ran to the purse.

This forms two independent clauses—"he found his mother's lost purse" and "he ran to the purse"—joined by and and interrupted with another clause, with necessary commas on either side of it. But I suspect the writer intended something like this:

Along the way, he found his mother's lost purse and, leaving his stuff behind, ran to the purse.

Since a fragment ("ran to the purse") doesn't need a comma to join it to an independent clause, this one flows a little better.

You're right that the repetition of "the purse" is redundant. You could fix it by replacing "the purse" with "it." A small amount of redundancy isn't a big deal though; it could be the writer's preference.