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Misplaced or Dangling Modifiers. What is a Modifier?. To modify means to change slightly. Modifiers are words, phrases, or clauses that provide description in sentences. They improve your sentences by making the meaning more precise.
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What is a Modifier? • To modify means to change slightly. • Modifiers are words, phrases, or clauses that provide description in sentences. They improve your sentences by making the meaning more precise. • Without modifiers, sentences would be no fun to read. Carefully chosen, well-placed modifiers allow you to depict situations with as much accuracy as words will allow.
Modifiers allow writers to take the picture that they have in their heads and transfer it accurately to the heads of their readers. Essentially, modifiers breathe life into sentences. Take a look at this "dead" sentence: • Stephen dropped his fork. • Now read what several well placed modifiers can do: • Poor Stephen, who just wanted a quick meal to get through his three-hour biology lab, quickly dropped his fork on the cafeteria tray, gagging with disgust as a tarantula wiggled out of his cheese omelet, a sight requiring a year of therapy before Stephen could eat eggs again. • Modifiers can be adjectives, adjective clauses, adverbs, adverb clauses, absolute phrases, infinitive phrases, participle phrases, and prepositional phrases. The sentence above contains at least one example of each: • Adjective = poor. • Adjective clause = who just wanted a quick meal. • Adverb = quickly. • Adverb clause = as a tarantula wiggled out of his cheese omelet. • Absolute phrase = a sight requiring a year of therapy before Stephen could eat eggs again. • Infinitive phrase = to get through his three-hour biology lab. • Participle phrase = gagging with disgust. • Prepositional phrase = on the cafeteria tray.
Basic rule about modifiers… • Modifiers are like teenagers: they fall in love with whatever they're next to. Make sure they're next to something they ought to modify! • If modifiers are placed next to something they shouldn’t be, you have something called a misplaced modifier.
Misplaced Modifiers • A modifier should be placed as close as possible to the word it modifies. • A misplaced modifier appears to modify the wrong word in a sentence. • For example: • Coming in for a landing, ground control radioed to the distressed airliner. • Because the modifier is placed right next to the noun “ground control,” it makes it sound as though ground control operators are the ones coming in for a landing instead of the airplane. • To fix this, we should move the modifier closer to “the distressed airliner” to avoid confusion. • Corrected version: Ground control radioed to the distressed airliner coming in for a landing.
Dangling Modifiers • Readers are also confused when a modified word seems to be missing entirely. • A dangling modifier appears to modify either the wrong word or no word at all because the word it should logically modify is missing. • For example: • Giving a party, several balloons were blown up. • We know the balloons aren’t giving the party, right? (At least we hope!) But since whoever is giving the partyis not present in the sentence, our modifier is left dangling. • To fix this, we simply need to add a reference to the people giving the party next to the modifier. • Corrected version:Giving a party,they blew up several balloons.
Recap • Misplaced Modifiers • The modifier is in the wrong place. • To fix: move the modifier close to the word(s) it is supposed to modify. • Dangling Modifiers • The word that should be modified is missing. • To fix: rewrite the sentence to include the missing word.
