Rx for strays, danglers, and squinters

WHEN writing, our first line of defense against misplaced modifiers or strays is to always place single-word modifiers beside or nearest to the words they modify. Look at this sentence: “Bert has nearly annoyed every girl he has courted with his boorish ways.” The adverb “nearly” wrongly modifies the adjective “annoyed” instead of the phrase “every girl he has courted.” The correct sense emerges by moving the adverb to its proper place: “Bert has annoyed nearly every girl he has courted with his boorish ways.” Even better: “With his boorish ways, Bert has annoyed nearly every girl he has courted.”

We should be cautious as well when positioning the other limiting modifiers “almost,” “hardly,” “just,” “only,” and “merely.” It’s a grammar-challenged person who says “My family almost ate all the food in the dinner table on Christmas Eve.” Say it smooth and clearly like this: “My family ate almost all the food in the dinner table on Christmas Eve.”

When using modifying phrases and clauses, put them closest to the word or phrases they modify so they don’t do any mischief. Consider this problematic sentence: “With malice, the hoodlum jabbed the pedestrian with his walking stick in the ears.” Place “in the ears” right after “pedestrian” and the problem disappears like magic: “With malice, the hoodlum jabbed the pedestrian in the ears with his walking stick.”

Rx for strays, danglers, and squinters

The trickiest misplaced modifiers are the danglers, which usually occur in participial phrases, infinitive phrases, and elliptical adverb clauses. Here’s a dangling participial phrase: “Lugging my suitcase to the hotel van, my left foot slipped into a manhole.” Corrected: “While I was lugging my suitcase to the hotel van, my left foot slipped into a manhole.” (The true doer of the action is the first person “I,” not “my left foot.”)

Here’s a dangling infinitive phrase: “To solve the problem, the correct approach should be adopted.” There’s no doer of the action in that sentence so we need, say, the second-person “you” to make it work. Corrected: “To solve the problem, you should adopt the correct approach.”

And here’s a dangling elliptical adverb clause: “As a grade schooler, my mother forced me to memorize Tagalog poems.” The sentence here seems to float in a time warp, with the mother — instead of the child — appearing to be the grade schooler. Corrected: “When I was a grade schooler, my mother forced me to memorize Tagalog poems.”

The strategies for avoiding dangling modifiers should be very clear by now:

(1) Make the subject of the main clause the logical doer of the action. Dangler from a newspaper sports story: “Only two legs after its launching, the green light has been given for the Samsung Amateur Tour to go truly nationwide next year…” Corrected: “Only two legs after its launching, the Samsung Amateur Tour got the green light to go truly nationwide next year…”

(2) Convert the dangling phrase into a complete introductory clause by naming the doer of the action in that clause. Dangler from newspaper business story: “To arrive at a reliable account of mission-critical performance of Clark Development Corp., it is useful to understand the mechanics of investments and opportunities.” Take out that dangle by using “one” as subject: “For one to arrive at a reliable account of the mission-critical performance of Clark Development Corp., it is useful to understand the mechanics of investments and opportunities.”

(3) Combine the dangling phrase and main clause into one. Dangler from a newspaper’s real estate article: “In describing the contour of a lot to build one’s home, there are three classifications, namely a flat lot, a depressed lot, or an elevated lot.” Nobody does anything in that sentence; things just back up into a dangle. Corrected: “There are three ways to describe the contours of a housing lot: flat, depressed, or elevated.” Now we have a simple declarative sentence where everything falls neatly into place, with no more dangler anywhere.

Read this essay and listen to its voice recording in The Manila Times: “Rx for strays, danglers, and squinters”

Next, Aug. 10, 2023: Proper and improper use of tense shifts

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