A misplaced modifier is fairly easy to
explain, but spotting one is sometimes
harder. So we'll first just explain what
it is, and then we'll do a bit of
practice to get better at finding them
in a sentence. A modifier then is
anything that describes, so a modifier is
description in a sentence, and that
description can be simply an adjective
or an adverb, but it can also be
something bigger, like a clause or a
phrase. And if we look at our first
example then (" I start started dating Kate,
a friend of Sarah, who has the most
beautiful eyes"), you can see that this
last bit here is kind of misplaced. So
"who has the most beautiful eyes" -- this is
called "a relative clause" ...
and it starts with a relative
pronoun here ("who") and that relates some
extra information. So this whole clause
then is a modifier. It's telling you
about something else. In this case
it's telling you about Kate, even though
it seems that it's telling about Sarah.
And that's actually the problem when we
have these kinds of relative clauses.
They tend to refer back to the thing
that is closest to them, which would be
Sarah, but in this case obviously we mean
that "who" refers back to Kate. And that's
why this is misplaced. We want this
clause to be much closer to the real
object or the real thing that's being
described here, which is Kate. So the
problem then is that we have this
appositive phrase stuck in between, and
that's causing all the trouble. It's
delaying this final clause. There
are some ways around this, so for
instance you could say "I started dating
Sarah's friend Kate," and that would
already bring "Kate" right next to "who."
That would solve the problem, but there
are other ways to do it as well. You
can just rearrange the sentence to make
sure that the clause and what it
modifies are right next to each other. The
next one reads, "I read about his
fraudulent behavior in the bathtub." In
this case we have a phrase here at the
end, and this is a prepositional phrase,
and the prepositional phrase is
presumably describing "I." So I was sitting
in the bathtub,
reading a newspaper I suppose, and then,
you know, you say I read about his
fraudulent behavior. The problem of
course is that "in the bathtub" -- this
prepositional phrase -- seems to be
describing the last thing, which is the
behavior, so is this behavior in the
bathtub fraudulent?
That doesn't quite make sense, does it? You can
fix this again by just moving things
around. You could say, for instance,
"While I was having a bath, I read about
his fraudulent behavior." So really just
try to make sure that your modifier is
as close as possible to the thing that
it modifies. The next one reads, "Two
Chinese ladies stopped my grandparents
selling their aphrodisiacs." Again, we have
this final bit here, and this is also a
phrase, but this is a participial phrase.
There are
quite a few more phrases and
clauses that cause trouble. We're not
going to talk about all of them in the
video, but the main thing here is just to
recognize these kinds of patterns where
you see that one piece of the sentence
is too far removed from what it
describes. And this participial phrase
sounds like it's describing grandparents
but it's supposed to be describing these
two Chinese ladies, and again we want to
move it closer to what it's describing. The
final two sentences here are trickier
because they contain a single word that
might be in the wrong place, and even
then sometimes you can argue about
whether it needs to be moved at all. In
the first one we read, "German shame about
the Nazi years affects their collective
psyche still. This last word "still" is
really modifying "affects." It still
affects. So I think it would be better to
move it closer to "affects." "German
shame about the Nazi years still affects
their collective psyche." It's not
terrible to have it at the end, but again
we want to think about what it really is
modifying and maybe move it a little bit
closer. And then the last one shows one
that's very tricky, and a mistake that
pretty much all of us make at different
times. So this one says, "During our time
in office, our government will only raise
taxes for the wealthiest individuals."
And the problem is this little word "only." In
fact, of all the misplaced modifiers, this
is probably the most common and the
trickiest one to watch out for. So if you
say "will only raise taxes for the
wealthiest individuals" -- what is "only"
actually modifying, right? What is it
modifying? Is it the raising taxes or is
it that you're raising taxes only for
the wealthiest individuals? The
latter is actually the case. This
really only should be (if you want to be
grammatically correct ) after
raising taxes. Raising taxes for whom?
Only for the wealthiest individuals,
because what's otherwise implied is that
during our time in office our government
is going to do only one thing.
We're only going to raise taxes, and
that's about it. We're not going to do
anything about other reforms or make
other changes. We're just
going to raise taxes -- that's it. Now let's
maybe expressing a bit too strongly, but
you can see here what is meant, that "only"
sounds okay, but it really should be a
little bit further in the sentence.
That's it for misplaced modifiers. We'll
do another video just with a bit more
practice, but hopefully you get the
concept and try to do some exercises on
the website to get better at finding
these kinds of mistakes.