muokatessaan

Muokatessaan is a Finnish participial form of the verb muokata, meaning to edit or modify. It functions as an adverbial participle that expresses that the action of editing takes place simultaneously with the action described in the main clause. The form is typically used in written Finnish to link two events concisely and to indicate the subject of the participial clause is the same as the subject of the main clause.

In practice, muokatessaan introduces a time-related, overlapping action. It is commonly found in narrative prose, technical writing, and journalistic style, where concise sentence structures are useful. The construction can convey simultaneity and, depending on context, a sense of cause or accompanying action.

Examples:

- Hän muokatessaan kuvaa huomasi virheen. (While editing the photo, he noticed a mistake.)

- Kuvatekstiä kirjoittaessaan hän päivitti kuvan. (While writing the caption, he updated the image.)

The form is one of several participial constructions in Finnish that allow a single sentence to express multiple actions from the same subject. It is generally considered more formal and literary than everyday spoken Finnish, where explicit subordinate clauses or conjunctions are more common.

See also: Finnish participles, non-finite clauses, compound sentence construction.