ING-Clause Usage+Meaning

Question

I have a question about the sentence pattern ([subject] [non-ing verb clause], [ing verb clause]) illustrated by the following:

Bill Gross’s email included a 10-point outline of what he saw as major problems at the Newport Beach, Calif., firm, blaming specific executives, according to a person familiar with the situation.

If I write the following:

1. The report describes the problems at the firm, blaming specific employees.
2. The report describes the problems at the firm and blames specific employees.

, how are sentences 1 & 2 different? Does sentence 1 contain meanings not found in sentence 2?

Answer 1

The statements are equivalent.

EDIT: Commenters have asked for an explanation of why they are not different.

These are both present-tense forms of the verb. Both forms, blaming and blames, mean that the report ascribes the problems it describes to specific employees.

He attempts to disable the bomb, taking care not to jostle the wires.
He attempts to disable the bomb and takes care not to jostle the wires.

A possible sliver of difference between the two statements might be that the participle draws a smidgen more attention to itself. A movie director might zoom in on the wires in a close-up to show that care was being taken not to jostle them.

But I would add that such nuances are generally not present in expository prose and straightforward journalism.

Answer 2

The 1st sentence is correct according to grammar, and the 2nd one is not correct.

Because the gerund has been used incorrectly, the gerund could be used as object or subject, but in 2nd sentence gerund is naither in object nor in subject case.