Recognizing and Fixing Misplaced and Dangling Modifiers
By: Jane Sumerset
Submitted: 2010-01-01 23:18:44 | Word Count: 535
Modifiers are important elements of writing, describing and qualifying another word to craftily change its meaning. As such, they’re often employed across many pieces of writing to stellar results. Unfortunately, they’re also misused in a huge way.
For those who haven’t got any clue what are these modifiers are, well, these are words that are considered as adverbs and adjectives. These words are very important in order to give clearer descriptions about a certain word that they modify within a sentence.
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There should be a correct way of describing a certain word in order not to confuse them among the rest of the words in your sentence. that’s because, a lot of people are using the improper way of placing these modifiers within their text.
Every time I read a blog or some other loosely edited form of text, it’s no longer surprising to find modifiers used in a bad manner. Whether misplaced or dangling, they muddy up the sentence, potentially creating confusion and changing its meaning. In the case of erroneous modifiers, you can usually catch extremely obvious ones by using a grammar software. Most of the time, though, you’ll really have to read through the text in order to recognize them.
This is what we call it dangling modifiers since these words are not clearly stated in your sentence. if this kind of a situation happens in your content, then it might leave your readers hanging upon the concept you are trying to discuss.
Dangling Modifiers
A dangling modifier describes a particular object that is not in the sentence at all. A lot of the time, this is a mistake that happens when a writer edits text and takes out a subject while forgetting to alter the modifier (make sure you read through every sentence you redo). It’s also a frequent occurrence when the object being referred to is mentioned in the preceding sentence. As such, make sure to check there first, if you find a modifier floating free of an object to alter.
Example:
As soon as he arrived, it gathered. (gathered doesn’t exactly refer to anything in the sentence, although it could be meant to describe the action of the crowd that is previously mentioned )
Misplaced Modifiers
A misplaced modifier, on the other hand, is in the right sentence, but is situated at a part of the it where the object it refers to might be misconstrued. Often resulting in odd but humorous images, they can be solved by simply rearranging the sentence so that the modifiers line up correctly.
Example:
With his body in pain, the doctor went to work on the patient. (the patient, in actuality, is the one in pain; the modifier, however, suggests that the doctor was the one suffering)
The next time you are going to write a content where modifiers are commonly been a part of it, I would suggest that you should write first the whole concept of your topic excluding the modifiers. Then, read it all over again in order to insert the appropriate modifier to the word it describes the most. This can will surely help in order to avoid dangling and misplaced modifiers.
Author Resource:-
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