Editing Tip of the Week: Avoiding Misplaced Modifiers

We all want to produce clear, concise writing. We spell check, read out loud to catch poor sentence structure, ask others to proofread, and then go through it all again. But sometimes there are mistakes that go unnoticed. One of the most common mistakes involves misplaced modifiers. The simple rule of placing modifiers with the words they modify is not easily followed, according to Sharon Schuman at the University of Oregon. In her Top Ten Tips for Effective Writing, she refers to an example from Strunk and White that illustrates the problem. In the sentence He only found two mistakes, the meaning is ambiguous. Does the writer mean that there were more than two mistakes? It’s unclear. By moving the sentence around to read He found only two mistakes, the sentence leaves nothing to question.

If a sentence sounds unintentionally ambiguous or just plain awkward, it could be due to a misplaced modifier. It could be an adverb like only, just, merely, nearly, or almost. Or it could be a misplaced phrase or clause that changes the intended meaning of the sentence. I found one of the funniest examples of this on Towson University’s online writing support site. In the sentence The waiter served the dinner roll to the woman that was well-buttered, it appears that the woman is well-buttered, not the dinner roll. Although the roll is the more obvious choice for being the buttered subject, the phrasing is still awkward. Changing it to The waiter served the well-buttered dinner roll to the woman erases any chance of confusion or laughter.

To avoid writing humorous sentences when none are intended, make sure modifiers go with the words they are meant to modify. This may require more than simply moving the modifier. You may need to restructure the whole sentence to make it clear and concise.

For more information, visit www.bartleby.com for Strunk and White’s tips;
www.uoregon.edu/~sschuman/tentips98 ; www.towson.edu/ows/moduleDangling