Misplaced Modifiers
Jul 7th, 2008 | By John Roach | Category: GrammarHi, I’m John, your friendly neighborhood copy editor. If you’re interested, you can learn more about me here.
Since this is my first day, I thought I’d eat my dessert first and start off with a grammar mistake that I really enjoy: misplaced modifiers. Not that I enjoy the error per se, but I enjoy catching and fixing it.
The problem:
Misplaced modifiers create confusion as to who is doing what: “Lying in the sand, the waves washed over me.”
The solution:
Ensure that the words being modified are next to the modifiers: “The waves washed over me while I was lying in the sand.”
Here’s the canonical example:
“In a cage, I saw a tiger at the zoo.”
What’s the mistake? The modifier in question is the “In a cage” part of the sentence. Grammatically, the next word should be the word being modified. So, parsing this sentence literally, the speaker was in a cage when he saw the tiger. Let’s just hope he wasn’t in the cage with the tiger.
“I saw a tiger in a cage at the zoo.”
Let’s try a real-word example on for size. This is one you see might see in newspapers a lot:
“At 4:18 A.M., police said the car went off the road.”
While that might be true, I know for a fact that none of the reporters were working at 4:18 A.M. Furthermore, I don’t care when the police said the car went off the road, I want to know when the car actually went off the road.
The fix? Often, it’s easiest just to move the modifying phrase to the end of the sentence.
“Police said the car went off the road at 4:18 A.M.”
Depending on how the bigger piece is structured, however, you may want to recast, or reword, the sentence to make the car the subject:
“The car went off the road at 4:18 A.M., police said.”
What’s the problem? I’m sure intelligent readers such as yourself can piece out the meaning from the sentence despite the error. Let’s look at some cases where the mistake muddies your meaning.
“Days after they filed for bankruptcy, Company A made an offer for Company B.”
Here, the mistake causes ambiguity and more than a little concern. If they’ve got sufficient assets to make a bid for Company B, why are they filing for bankruptcy? More likely, it is Company B who is going into chapter 11 and is therefore a likely target for acquisition.
“Company A made an offer for Company B, days after the latter filed for bankruptcy.”
Misplaced modifiers don’t have to come at the beginning of the sentence:
“He handed brochures to the salesmen that outlined the company’s products.”
The salesmen did no such thing. It is the brochures that outlined the products.
“He handed brochures that outlined the company’s products to the salesmen.”
Here are some resources for more information on the topic:
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This article was written by John Roach http://prowritingtips.com John is a writer and copy editor. You can follow him on twitter at . To see more posts click here |
[...] Misplaced modifiers are fixed by moving the modifier right next to the word being modified. Sitting on the couch, the TV is too far away to see. [...]