Author Topic: Reining in those footloose modifiers  (Read 4423 times)

Joe Carillo

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Reining in those footloose modifiers
« on: September 03, 2017, 02:52:54 PM »
While skimming the major Manila dailies several years ago, I thought that perhaps I should take up footloose modifiers to make writers in English keenly aware of the serious semantic damage they can do to prose.



Consider, in particular, the subtle yet strongly subversive misplaced modifier in this glowing print ad testimonial of a movie star for her skin-care specialist: “I swear, the touch of (name of specialist) really works like magic! I’ve tried other laser treatments before but I love (name of specialist) Laser Hair Removal the most. I really see and feel the difference. No need to look elsewhere for me. I trust (name of specialist) completely.”

Now I’m giving you exactly 75 seconds to ferret out that nasty spoiler of the otherwise engaging advertising pitch… Still haven’t found it? OK, it’s in the fourth sentence: “No need to look elsewhere for me.” Because the modifier “for me” is in the wrong place, the sentence is actually telling us to make it our business to look for the endorser (as if we had nothing else to do), but that we needn’t bother anymore because we now should know where she would be.

But that’s far, far from what the movie star means, of course; in fact, once that misplaced modifier is reined in, we find that what she really means is this: “No need for me to look elsewhere.” She doesn’t want us to do anything, and it’s she who has decided to stop looking elsewhere.


Now let’s examine a semantically less vicious but more grammatically troublesome kind of misplaced modifier. The following very instructive specimen comes from American novelist Pat Conroy’s otherwise superb autobiographical book, The Water is Wide (1972): “I moved to Beaufort, South California, in the early sixties, a town fed by warm salt tides and cooled by mild winds from the sea…” [italics mine].

This sentence is disjointed and awkward to read because the modifying phrase “a town fed by warm salt tides from the sea…” is cut off from its rightful subject (“Beaufort, California”) by the prepositional phrase “in the early sixties.” And although the intended meaning still manages to come through, the construction is semantically absurd because it makes the phrase “a town fed by warm salt tides and cooled by mild winds…” modify “in the early sixties” instead of “Beaufort, California.”

How do we rein in such misplaced modifiers?  

One way is to position the phrase “in the early sixties” right before the pronoun “I,” which is its logical subject: “In the early sixties I moved to Beaufort, South California, a town fed by warm salt tides…” Another way is to put that phrase right after the verb “moved,” so it clearly modifies that verb: “I moved in the early sixties to Beaufort, South California, a town fed by warm salt tides…” Either way, all of the grammar elements fall neatly into place to make a much more readable sentence.

Misplaced modifiers are, of course, only one of the three major forms of footloose modifiers that can wreak havoc on prose. The second form is the dangling modifier, which is a word or phrase that modifies a word not clearly stated in the sentence, and the third is the squinting modifier, one where we simply can’t figure out which word is being modified because the writer’s intention isn’t clear. We will encounter these three forms of misplaced modifiers very often in other people’s prose as well as in our own, but we can forearm ourselves against them by consistently observing this general rule: position a modifying word or phrase as close as possible to the noun it modifies.


Now let’s examine some of the very instructive specimens of dangling modifiers that I had gathered from print ads and news stories. For starters, consider the perilously dangling modifier in this statement from a print ad of an Internet service provider: “When determining the perfect package to fit your Internet surfing needs, it becomes a question of which speed fits your budget.”

Who is the doer of the action in this sentence? It’s not clear. We might suppose that the pronoun “it” is both the doer of the action as well as the subject of the main clause, but it soon becomes clear that ”it” here is not a proper subject but simply an expletive. The phrase “when determining the perfect package to fit your Internet surfing needs” therefore dangles because it doesn’t seem to relate at all to the main clause.

We can get rid of such danglers in three ways. The first is to rewrite the modifying phrase so the doer of the action becomes integral to it. In this particular case, of course, the second-person “you” is the most logical doer of the action: “When you are determining the perfect package to fit your Internet surfing needs, a question that needs to be asked is which speed fits your budget.” The dangle disappears because of the simple insertion of “you” in that modifying phrase (for clarity’s sake, though, the main clause was also restructured to eliminate the troublesome expletive “it”). In any case, observe that in this new construction, the modifying phrase became a subordinate clause, with the subject “you” now specifically doing the action of “determining the perfect package.”

The second way is to rewrite the main clause so that its subject clearly becomes also the doer of the action in the modifying phrase: “When determining the perfect package to fit your Internet surfing needs, you need to ask which speed fits your budget.” This construction puts the subject (“you”) adjacent to both the operative verb (“need to ask”) and the modifying phrase, making their semantic roles unmistakable.

The third way, whenever it’s feasible, is to combine the modifying phrase and the main clause into one: “You need to ask which speed fits your budget to determine the perfect package for your Internet surfing needs.” Such radical restructuring, however, should be resorted to only if it poses no danger of destroying the continuity of the passage where the sentence is at work.

The same reconstruction logic can be applied to undangle this similarly problematic sentence from another recent newspaper sports story: “Despite being absent in major events relative to the Southeast Asian Games the past few weeks, it doesn’t mean [name of a sports official] is sleeping on his job as national training director.”

The first rewrite option: “Despite his being absent in major events relative to the Southeast Asian Games the past few weeks, (name of a sports official) is actually not sleeping on his job as national training director.” The second rewrite option: “Despite being absent in major events relative to the Southeast Asian Games the past few weeks, (name of a sports official) is actually not sleeping on his job as national training director.” And the third rewrite option: “The (name of a sports official) is actually not sleeping on his job as national training director despite his absence in major Southeast Asian Games events during the past few weeks.”

But a word of caution about the proximity-to-the-subject rule: it doesn’t apply to sentences that end with a modifying phrase that follows a comma. In such constructions, the modifying phrase always refers to the subject of the sentence, not to the noun or pronoun closest to that phrase: “The pirates overwhelmed the sailors, taking away all their possessions.” For a fleeting moment we might think that “sailors” is the doer of the action in the modifying phrase, considering that “sailors” is nearer to that phrase than the subject “the pirates.” Wrong. The true subject of the modifying phrase in such sentence constructions is unfailingly the subject of the main clause.

Another exception to the rules against dangling modifiers is the use of prepositional phrases introduced by such participles as “regarding” and “considering” and by such participial phrases as “speaking of” and “judging by.” Such modifying phrases pose no danger of creating danglers even in the clear absence of a doer of the action: “Regarding the impeachment proceedings, the outcome was obviously not unexpected.” “Speaking of regal beauty, Helen’s is truly legendary.” These sentences are semantically sound and dangle-free and absolutely need no fixing.

Danglers more commonly come in the form of modifying phrases or clauses that have nothing to modify because there’s no doer of the action to link up with in the sentence. Typical of these danglers are modifying phrases or clauses in sentences whose main clause is in the passive voice and doesn’t indicate a doer of the action.  

Take this dangling prepositional phrase: “By calling in the support of staunch allies, the impeachment proceedings were effectively scuttled.” Here, with no doer of the action in the main clause, the sentence creates the absurd notion that it was the impeachment proceedings that called in the support. Such dangles, of course, readily disappear when the doer of the action is clearly identified in the modifying phrase: “By calling in the support of staunch allies, the President’s operatives effectively scuttled the impeachment proceedings.”

Now take this dangling “when” phrase: “When taking a summer vacation, my favorite getaway destination is Boracay Beach.” Here, what comes across is the preposterous idea that the getaway destination is the one taking a summer vacation. The logical doer of the action here is, of course, the first-person “I,” and we can get rid of the dangle by making it the subject of the main clause: “When taking a summer vacation, I go to Boracay Beach, which is my favorite getaway destination.”

But not all danglers are this simple, however. Take this particularly befuddled specimen from a recent advertorial for a perfume brand: “Whether you’re preppy or pretty, lovely or lively, (name of brand) Body Spray is a must-have scent for every girl who wants to smell good and feel great no matter what mood they’re in.” Here, the copywriter mistook the body spray brand as the subject of the main clause. In that sentence construction, however, the subject logically could only be the second-person “you.” Once this is clear in our mind, in fact, undangling that sentence becomes a breeze.

First undangling: “Whether you’re preppy or pretty, lovely or lively, you need (name of brand] Body Spray to smell good and feel great no matter what mood you’re in.” The subject being modified here is clearly “you.” (The main clause can’t use “every girl” as the subject; it is semantically dysfunctional because “you” is being used as a generic pronoun here. Along with the phrase “a must-have scent,” “every girl” has to be thrown out to avoid confusing the reader.)

Second undangling: “Whether you’re preppy or pretty, lovely or lively, (name of brand) Body Spray will make you smell good and feel great no matter what mood you’re in.” Here, the body spray brand retains its original position in the sentence, but “every girl” has similarly been stricken out and the “you” in the main clause clearly functions as the subject of the modifying phrase.


Now we can finally take up squinting modifiers, or those footloose modifiers that are perceived to modify either the word before them or the word after them. Here’s a prototype squinter: “Speaking in English clearly establishes your ascendancy over the other job applicants.” The adverb “clearly” squints because the way it is used, we can’t decide whether it is “speaking in English clearly” that establishes the ascendancy or it is “speaking in English” that clearly establishes the ascendancy.

Three simple rewrite routines can eliminate that squint: “Clearly speaking in English will establish your ascendancy over the other job applicants.” “By speaking in English, you can clearly establish your ascendancy over the other job applicants.” “Speaking in English will clearly establish your ascendancy over the other job applicants.” Our choice, of course, will depend on the precise meaning that we want to convey.

Sometimes, however, the squint can be so unusually serious as to defy such simple reconstructions. Take this peculiar squinter in a recent mobile phone service print ad: “‘A PC in every home’ is what Bill Gates envisioned as a fresh college dropout.” This inverted sentence is so bewildering because by some semantic quirk, the modifying phrase “as a fresh college dropout” seems not so much to modify the noun “Bill Gates,” which it should, as to modify “a PC in every home” instead. (Got the drift now of that mischievous squint?)

At any rate, we can fix that squint by reconstructing the sentence in three ways: “What Bill Gates envisioned when he was a fresh college dropout was ‘a PC in every home’.” “As a fresh college dropout, Bill Gates envisioned ‘a PC in every home’.” Or, even more simply, “Gates envisioned ‘a PC in every home’ when he was a fresh college dropout.”

Indeed, we can get rid of squinters by simply following the time-honored rule for dealing with all footloose modifiers: always position a modifying word or phrase as close as possible to the noun it modifies. It is remarkably effective. (circa 2005)

This essay first appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times and subsequently formed Chapter 120 of his book Give Your English the Winning Edge, © 2009 by the author. All rights reserved.
« Last Edit: September 04, 2017, 09:08:17 AM by Joe Carillo »