[Hoot]
Uh huh……uh huh….yeah….do you really think my kidneys could take that kind of punishment
again?
Ooh, Gladys, I’m gonna have to call you back.
The most adorable thing just happened.
"Talking on the phone, a cat just passed me.:
Hi, I’m Bianca from the Purdue OWL.
And I didn’t really see a cat talking on the phone just now, although that would be
pretty amazing.
What I meant to say was that while I was on the phone, I saw a cat.
My language was misleading because I accidentally used a dangling modifier.
What’s a dangling modifier, you ask? Well,
to understand that, let’s break the term into its two parts.
We’ll be working through the term backwards, since I think we all have a pretty good idea
of what it means to “dangle.”
As for the second part: a “modifier” is any word or phrase that clarifies or gives
additional detail about a different word or phrase.
For example, when I talk about a “solid brick wall,” the words “solid” and “brick”
are both modifiers for the word “wall.”
They describe how firm the wall is and what it’s made of.
Solid.
Brick.
Modifiers are great tools to make your writing more descriptive.
To be effective, modifiers should be placed as close as possible to the word or phrase
that they’re modifying.
If they aren’t—say, if you put them on the wrong side of the sentence?
Then the modifiers are off, they're all alone, they are dangling in the wind, and we get dangling modifiers.
Remember my cat example?
I said, “talking on the phone, a cat passed me.”
In this case, the phrase “talking on the phone” is the modifier.
I meant for it to modify what I was doing at the time.
But, by putting the phrase at the beginning of the sentence, it modified the cat instead.
Cue the confusion.
Aww….
Anyway, therein lies the problem: dangling modifiers can sometimes be amusing, but they are
always confusing.
Luckily, they’re easy to fix.
For example:
Now, unless you’re a human-bird hybrid, this doesn’t quite work.
Instead, this sentence should probably go something like this.
See?
Much clearer, now that the modifier is closer to the bird.
Now both me and the bird are separate species again, and I’m out of trouble.
Here’s another example:
In this case, why does Steven only make cake if his friends have sprinkles?
Do they pay for their cake with sprinkles instead of cash?
And why does Steven need all of those sprinkles? [Ominous laughter]
Again, dangling modifiers have a simple solution.
All you need to do is rearrange the sentence so that the modifier is next to the thing
it’s modifying.
Easy enough.
In fact, the biggest challenge you may face is seeing dangling modifiers in the first
place.
This is why it’s always a good idea to have someone else look at your writing.
Having that second set of eyes helps find issues that you might have missed.
And, after all, whether the person giving you feedback is a family member, a friend,
an instructor, or a friendly neighborhood writing lab tutor, aren’t we all dangling
through this life…together?
I’m Bianca.
Thanks for watching!
[Hoot]