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Misplaced Modifiers 3088 Views
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Want even more deets on misplaced modifiers? Click here to review. Or take a look at our entire grammar section for all the goods.
Transcript
- 00:04
Misplaced modifiers, a la Shmoop. You're driving down a narrow road in the middle
- 00:09
of the night. Suddenly, a suicidal deer jumps in front of your car.
- 00:16
There are two ways to break the news to your insurance agent. You could say, "A deer
- 00:20
just hit my windshield!"...
- 00:23
...or, "A deer hit just my windshield!" Welcome to the wonderful world of modifiers!
Full Transcript
- 00:32
If you couldn't guess, a modifier is a word or phrase that modifies another word or phrase.
- 00:38
Sometimes, if you're not careful, you can misplace a modifier. A misplaced modifier
- 00:44
is a modifier that modifies the wrong thing. A modifier can be a single word, like "only",
- 00:50
"just", or "almost".
- 00:52
Let's look at a couple of examples. You could say, "Mike ate only venison"...
- 00:56
...or, "Mike only ate venison."
- 00:59
In these examples, the word "only" modifies the word behind it, giving these sentences
- 01:03
completely different meanings. If you say, "Mike ate only venison", what
- 01:08
you mean is that Mike ate nothing but dead deer.
- 01:14
If you say, "Mike only ate venison", however, what you mean is that the only thing Mike
- 01:19
did with the deer meat was eat it. He didn't cook it...
- 01:22
...and he didn't buy it from his local grocer.
- 01:29
You could also use a short phrase at the beginning of a sentence as a modifier. Here's the formula:
- 01:35
short modifying phrase...
- 01:37
...plus comma...
- 01:38
...plus the rest of the sentence.
- 01:41
Just remember, whatever the modifying phrase refers to should immediately follow the comma.
- 01:45
Here are some examples. While you could say, "Freshly cooked, Lisa left the venison to
- 01:52
cool down"...
- 01:53
...what you really mean is, "Freshly cooked, the venison was left by Lisa to cool down."
- 02:00
While you might be tempted to say, "Covered in flies, the highway crew pulled the deer
- 02:04
carcass off the road"...
- 02:05
...what you really mean is, "Covered in flies, the deer carcass was pulled off the
- 02:09
road by the highway crew." When it comes to modifiers, the smartest thing
- 02:14
you can do is to pay attention to what you're writing.
- 02:16
You don't want to misplace a modifier...
- 02:19
...any more than you'd want to misplace any leftovers.
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