Join the following sentences to make one complete sentence without using and, but or so.
Mrs. Kumar has been a teacher for thirty years. She will now retire.
Topic: Synthesis — participial phrase
Answer
Having been a teacher for thirty years, Mrs. Kumar will now retire. (Also acceptable: Mrs. Kumar, who has been a teacher for thirty years, will now retire.)
Two good answers are available and both are worth knowing.
The PERFECT PARTICIPLE — "Having been a teacher for thirty years" — puts the completed action first and is the neatest solution, since it uses no conjunction at all.
The RELATIVE CLAUSE — "Mrs. Kumar, WHO has been a teacher for thirty years, will now retire" — is equally correct. Note the commas: because the clause adds extra information rather than identifying which Mrs. Kumar is meant, it is non-defining and must be enclosed in commas.
THE DANGLING PARTICIPLE RULE applies to the first version: the subject following the phrase must be the person who was the teacher. "Having been a teacher for thirty years, the school gave her a farewell" would be wrong, because the school was not the teacher.