Jose Carillo's English Forum

English Grammar and Usage Problems => Badly Written, Badly Spoken => Topic started by: Miss Mae on February 07, 2020, 09:56:51 AM

Title: Dangling modifier?
Post by: Miss Mae on February 07, 2020, 09:56:51 AM

Sir, isn't the phrase "because even if love makes the world go round" a dangling modifier in this Facebook post of the National Wages and Productivity Commission (https://www.facebook.com/dole.nwpc/photos/a.813049018719008/3066395866717634/?type=3&theater)?

"Because even if love makes the world go round, February 14 is still not a holiday"

Thank you.

Title: Re: Dangling modifier?
Post by: Joe Carillo on February 08, 2020, 04:01:01 AM

This sentence you presented from that Facebook post of the National Wages and Productivity Commission doesn't make logical sense no matter how it is reconstructed: "Because even if love makes the world go round, February 14 is still not a holiday."

Reconstruction 1: "February 14 is still not a holiday because even if love makes the world go round." (It is nonsensical owing to faulty syntax. Read it aloud two or three times to see the absurdity or the non sequitur--"it doesn't follow"--aspect of the sentence.)

Reconstruction 2: "February 14 is still not a holiday even if love makes the world go round." (It is nonsensical still even if the problematic "because" is dropped. The apparent intent to evoke a cause-and-effect between the "if"-clause "even if love makes the world go round" and the result clause "February 14 is still not a holiday" is not logically realized.)

You asked if the phrase "because even if love makes the world go round" is a dangling modifier." It definitely isn't. A dangling modifier is a word or phrase that modifies a word not clearly stated in the sentence. That phrase just happens to be very badly worded and illogically crafted cause for an outcome that doesn't follow from the premise.

What to do about this problem? Shoot it back to the National Wages and Productivity Commission to give them a chance to fix it and repost a grammatically and syntactically acceptable revision.