In this second of a series on jaw-dropping grammar mistakes by people we least expect to commit them, we’ll take a close look at the following photo caption that came out in a leading newspaper on the last day of 2006:
“Captured by US troops from inside a hole in the ground, this unsourced photo reportedly shows [the fugitive leader] being dragged out of his hideout on Dec. 13, 2003.”
It wasn’t clear whether this photo caption was written by the newspaper’s editorial staff or by the wire services agency that provided the photo. In any case, the photo clearly showed the (fugitive leader) (now dead by hanging) being taken out of his hiding place by American troops.
When we read that caption, several nagging questions come to mind: Was it really the “unsourced photo” that was captured by the US troops, or was it the fugitive leader himself? Could it be both? Or could it be that figuratively, the troops captured the image of “(the fugitive leader) being dragged out if his hideout” by photographing him “from inside a hole in the ground”?
Once we have clearly sorted out things in our mind, the problem with that sentence becomes clear: the participial phrase up front, “captured by US troops from inside a hole in the ground,” is modifying a wrong subject, the noun phrase “this unsourced photo.” Based on elementary logic and on what’s now common knowledge about that incident, the subject of that participial phrase should be no other than the late Iraqi strongman himself.
ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLE OF HOW TO FIX A MISPLACED MODIFIER
What we have here, of course, is a badly constructed sentence that’s semantically demolished by a misplaced modifier and further thrown into disarray by two seriously inappropriate word choices, “unsourced” and “reportedly.”
Remember now that misplaced modifiers are words, phrases, or clauses that don’t point clearly to the word or words they are meant to modify. It may be clear to the writer which should modify which, but the sentence as constructed may not reflect what he or she has in mind. This is why it’s an absolute must to double-check our compositions for telltale signs of modifiers that have gone astray, particularly when writing for publications like newspapers.
Our first line of defense against misplaced modifiers is, of course, to position a modifying word or phrase as close as possible to the noun it’s intended to modify. We’ll be doing that to the problematic sentence in a little while, but it would be better to first address the problems created by the two badly chosen words in the sentence: the adjective “unsourced” as a modifier of “photo,” and the adverb “reportedly” as a modifier of “shows.”
We can be sure that “unsourced” couldn’t be what the writer had in mind, for if that photo were “unsourced,” then it must have materialized from nothing. That’s an absurd idea, of course, since we know very well that that photo was taken by the troops who had arrested Saddam. It’s most likely then that the writer meant to say that the photo was “without attribution” or “without credits”—in short, “unattributed.”
As to “reportedly,” this adverb—a much-abused form of journalese, I must say—obviously doesn’t fit here. It means “according to report” or something we are being asked to believe based on a report. In this particular case, however, we don’t have to be asked to believe that it was Saddam “being dragged out of his hideout” because it was clearly him in the picture. We can therefore safely drop “reportedly” from the sentence.
So now we can confidently revise the problematic sentence, putting the true subject of the participial phrase in its proper place and doing away with the two ill-chosen words that just ruin the semantic picture:
“Captured by US troops on Dec. 13, 2003, (the fugitive leader) is shown in the above photo being dragged from his underground hideout.” (2007)
This essay, 518th in the series, first appeared in the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times
in its January 8, 2007 issue, © 2007 by Manila Times Publishing. All rights reserved.The Manila Times
ran one column on “The importance of grammar-perfect English” series each week for seven weeks in 2006, and my Facebook Gateway to the Forum is now running one of them every three days in succession on February 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, and 21, 2017 for the benefit of new Forum members and English learners.(Next:
The importance of grammar-perfect English – III (February 9, 2017 )
