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Legal Writing

: Triangle Grammar Guide

Modify your misplaced and dangling modifiers

By Pam_Nelson

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Misplaced and dangling modifiers can sneak in when writers and editors aren't paying attention. A couple of readers found such constructions in recent N&O pieces, and I found a couple in one article I was reading on another Web site. Those examples provide the makings for this post.

A modifier is a word, a phrase or a clause that changes the meaning of other words by adding description or precision. Modifiers can act as adjectives or as adverbs.

A modifier can be said to be misplaced if it is too far from the word it is meant to modify. A dangling modifier is one that doesn't seem to apply to anything in the sentence. Dangling modifiers can make our sentences unintentionally humorous, as in this one cited in an Internet discussion: Covered with melted cheese, we ate the pizza.

Modifiers can also be squinting, appearing to modify two words at once. The Associated Press Stylebook has a doozy of an example in its entry: Those who lie often are found out.

A reader called my attention to a misplaced modifier in a recent N&O report: McCance was found shot to death by her family Monday afternoon at her southern Wake County home. The family did the finding. Here is a suggested edit: Her family found McCance shot to death Monday afternoon at her southern Wake County home.

A dangler shows up in another recent story: Nearly six months after taking office, Gov. Beverly Perdue's political honeymoon is over. The beginning phrase was meant to describe Gov. Perdue herself, but the subject of the sentence is honeymoon. The first phrase is dangling because it doesn't actually modify the subject of the sentence. A textbook titled "Grammar and Composition" (Prentice-Hall, 1982) reminds us that you can usually fix a dangling modifier by adding the missing word to the main clause or by rephrasing the modifier to include the missing word. Using that advice, I suggest an edit for the sentence above: Nearly six months after Gov. Beverly Perdue took office, her political honeymoon is over.

The pair of danglers I encountered appeared in an article at www.playsavvy.com and linked on the AOL home page. The story was about a recent case of a teenager convicted of killing his mother and injuring his father because his parents tried to restrict his video-game playing.

The article opened with: As a parent, the so-called "Halo killer" may have you nervously watching your kids as they jab at their joysticks. The "Halo killer" is not a parent. In an effort to make this article relevant to the audience, the writer leaves his opening phrase dangling. A reworking is in order: If you are a parent, hearing about the "Halo killer" may have you nervously watching your kids as they jab at their joysticks. (I also excised so-called because the quotation marks do the job.)

Later in the same story came another dangler. I underlined the offending modifier:

Another instance of a teenager flying into a rage after being deprived of a video game took place in 2006, in Arkansas. After grounding her grandson, Allen Gann, from playing games the night before for not doing his chores, he sat down and played a full day's worth, including Resident Evil, Smackdown vs. Raw and Midnight Club 2.

We are left to presume that the first phrase is meant to refer to the teen's grandmother. The way it is written, though, the modifier has nothing to modify in the sentence. It's dangling. By the way, the piece never identifies the grandmother by name. She just gets pronouns. Her name, which I found in another report of the incident, would be a good way to fix the dangler. After Georgia Gann grounded her grandson, Allen Gann ...

That article continued its confusing way with a fuzzy pronoun reference in the next paragraph. When she reminded him of the punishment, the 17-year-old flew into a rage, choking her and later, throwing a hammer at a state trooper. We readers can probably figure out that the "she" is the grandmother, but not only has the grandmother not been identified, that sentence's structure leaves it unclear who is the "she" and who is the "him."

Identifying and repairing misplaced, dangling and squinting modifiers can be a chore, but by doing that, writers and editors can go far toward making the readers' job of understanding much easier.

Full post as published by Triangle Grammar Guide on June 29, 2009 (boomark / email).