Our first line of defense against misplaced modifiers or strays is to make it a habit to place single-word modifiers beside or nearest to the words they modify. Look at this sentence: “Bert has
nearly annoyed every girl he has courted with his boorish ways.” In this case, we have a nonsensical situation because the adverb “nearly” wrongly modifies the adjective “annoyed” instead of the phrase “every girl he has courted.” We get the correct sense when we move the adverb to its proper place: “Bert has annoyed
nearly every girl he has courted with his boorish ways.”
For greater precision in your English, be cautious as well in placing such other limiting modifiers as “almost,” “hardly,” “nearly,” “just,” “only,” and “merely.” That way, you will never catch yourself ever saying “My family
almost ate all the food in the dinner table on Christmas Eve,” which can mark you as a grammar-challenged person. Instead, this smooth, non-intriguing version will come naturally to you: “My family
ate almost all the food in the dinner table on Christmas Eve.”
You can apply the same rule to modifying phrases and clauses: put them closest to the word or phrases they modify so they don’t do any mischief. Consider this sentence: “With malice, the hoodlum jabbed the pedestrian with his walking stick
in the ears.” By misplacing the modifier “in the ears,” a jumbled picture comes to mind. But when “in the ears” is placed right after “pedestrian,” the problem disappears like magic: “With malice, the hoodlum jabbed the pedestrian
in the ears with his walking stick.” This corrective technique works as well for squinting modifiers; simply make sure the modifying phrase or clause is in a place where it cannot do a two-timing job.
The trickiest forms of misplaced modifiers are the danglers, which usually occur in participial phrases, infinitive phrases, and elliptical adverb clauses. Here’s a dangling participial phrase: “
Lugging my suitcase to the hotel van, my left foot slipped into a manhole.” (Corrected: “
While I was lugging my suitcase to the hotel van, my left foot slipped into a manhole.” The true doer of the action is the first person “I,” not “my left foot.”) Here’s a dangling infinitive phrase: “
To solve the problem, the correct approach should be adopted.” (Corrected: “
To solve the problem, you should adopt the correct approach.” The first sentence has no doer of the action; we use the second-person “you” to make the second sentence work.) And here’s a dangling elliptical adverb clause: “
As a grade schooler, my mother forced me to memorize Tagalog poems.” (Corrected: “
When I was a grade schooler, my mother forced me to memorize Tagalog poems.” The first sentence seems to float in a time warp, with the mother—instead of the child—appearing to be the grade schooler.)
The strategies for revising dangling modifiers should be apparent by now:
(1) Make the logical doer of the action the subject of the main clause. Dangler from a sports story in a Manila newspaper: “
Only two legs after its launching, the green light has been given for the Samsung Amateur Tour to go truly nationwide next year with at least three more additional legs in the Visayas and Mindanao.” The phrase “Only two legs after its launching” wrongly modifies “the green light,” which is closest to it. Green lights, of course, are more often lit than launched, and they rarely have two legs to stand on. In fact, the phrase was really meant to modify “the Samsung Amateur Tour,” as in this version: “
Only two legs after its launching, the Samsung Amateur Tour got the green light to go truly nationwide next year with at least three more additional legs for the Visayas and Mindanao.”
(2) Convert the dangling phrase into a complete introductory clause by naming the doer of the action in that clause. Dangler from the business section of the same newspaper: “
To arrive at a reliable account of mission-critical performance of Clark Development Corp., it is useful to understand the mechanics of investments and opportunities.” The infinitive phrase dangles because there is no doer of the action; “it” does not qualify as one so it’s better to supply another. Solution:
“For one to arrive at a reliable account of the mission-critical performance of Clark Development Corp., it is useful to understand the mechanics of investments and opportunities.” The third-person “one” takes out the dangle.
(3) Combine the dangling phrase and main clause into one. Dangler from a real estate article in the same newspaper: “
In describing the contour of a lot to build one’s home, there are three classifications, namely a flat lot, a depressed lot, or an elevated lot.” Nobody does anything in the sentence; things just back up into a dangle. Solution: “
There are three ways to describe the contours of a housing lot: flat, depressed, or elevated.” Now we have a simple declarative sentence where everything falls neatly into place, with no danglers in sight.
It takes some doing, but if you can keep your strays, danglers, and squinters securely confined to quarters, your English should be much clearer, smoother, and more readable from now on.
This essay first appeared in the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times
and subsequently appeared as Chapter 39 in the Usage and Style section of his book English Plain and Simple: No-Nonsense Ways to Learn Today’s Global Language
, © 2004 by Jose A. Carillo, © 2008 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
