How misused modifiers can hurt your writing - Emma Bryce

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Modifiers are words, phrases, and clauses that add information about other parts of a sentence—which is usually helpful. But when modifiers aren’t linked clearly enough to the words they’re actually referring to, they can create unintentional ambiguity. Emma Bryce navigates the sticky world of misplaced, dangling and squinting modifiers.

Lesson by Emma Bryce, animation by Karrot Animation.

This just in:

"Thief robs town
with world's largest chocolate bunny."

Wait, so are we talking about this,

or this?

That's a classic case
of a misplaced modifier,

a common grammatical mistake

that can dramatically change
the meaning of a sentence.

And lest you think
this is a bit far-fetched,

confusing headlines like this
appear all the time.

Modifiers are words, phrases, and clauses

that add information
about other parts of a sentence,

which is usually helpful.

But when modifiers
aren't linked clearly enough

to the words
they're actually referring to,

they can create unintentional ambiguity.

That happens because the modifying words,

in this case,
"with world's largest chocolate bunny,"

modify the wrong thing,
the robber's actions instead of the town.

To correct this particular sentence,
we simply rephrase

to make it clearer what the modifying
phrase is talking about.

"Town with world's largest chocolate bunny
robbed by thief."

Now, at least it's clear

that the thief wasn't armed
with a giant chocolate animal.

Sometimes, modifying words,
phrases, or clauses

don't appear to be modifying
anything at all.

That's called a dangling modifier.

"Having robbed the bank in record time,

it was possible to make off
with the town's chocolate rabbit as well."

The modifying phrase in this sentence
seems unrelated to anything else,

and so we're clueless about

who the chocolate-loving criminal
could possibly be.

Giving the modifier something to modify
will solve the problem.

Then there's another group
called the squinting modifiers

because they're stuck between two things
and could feasibly refer to either.

Often, these modifiers are adverbs,
like the one in this sentence:

"Robbers who steal chocolate bunnies
rapidly attract the outrage of onlookers."

"Rapidly" is the modifier, here,
but what's not clear

is whether it's referring
to the speed of the chocolate thievery,

or how quickly it alerts
the furious onlookers.

To clarify, we can either put the modifier
closer to its intended phrase,

which works in some cases,

or we can entirely reword the sentence
so that the modifier no longer squints,

but clearly applies to only one part.

"Chocolate bunny-thieving robbers
rapidly attract the outrage of onlookers."

Justice will eventually come
to the chocolate thief,

but in the meantime,

our task is to avoid verbal ambiguity

by making it clear which parts
of the sentences modifiers belong to.

That way, we can at least maintain
grammatical law and order.