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Misplaced and Dangling Modifiers

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Misplaced and Dangling Modifiers
You have a certain amount of freedom in deciding where to place yourmodifiers in a sentence:
We rowed the boat vigorously.
We vigorously rowed the boat.
Vigorously we rowed the boat.
However, you must be careful to avoid misplaced modifiers -- modifiers that are positioned so that they appear to modify the wrong thing.
In fact, you can improve your writing quite a bit by paying attention to basic problems like misplaced modifiers and dangling modifiers.
Misplaced Words
In general, you should place single-word modifiers near the word or words they modify, especially when a reader might think that they modify something different in the sentence. Consider the following sentence:
[WRONG] After our …show more content…

A dangling modifier is usually a phrase or anelliptical clause -- a dependent clause whose subject and verb are implied rather than expressed -- that functions as an adjective but does not modify any specific word in the sentence, or (worse) modifies the wrong word. Consider the following example:
Raised in Nova Scotia, it is natural to miss the smell of the sea.
The introductory phrase in the above sentence looks as if it is meant to modify a person or persons, but no one is mentioned in the sentence. Such introductory adjective phrases, because of their position, automatically modify the first noun or pronoun that follows the phrase -- in this case, "it." The connection in this case is illogical because "it" was not raised in Nova Scotia. You could revise the sentence in a number of ways:
For a person raised in Nova Scotia, it is natural to miss the smell of the sea. (the phrase no longer functions as an adjective)
Raised in Nova Scotia, I often miss the smell of the sea. (the phrase functions as an adjective but now automatically modifies "I," a logical connection)
A dangling modifier can also appear when you place an elliptical clause improperly:
Although nearly finished, we left the play early because we were worried about our sick cat.
The way this sentence is structured, the clause "Although nearly finished" illogically modifies "we," the

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