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Dangling Modifiers 2646 Views


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Description:

This video explains what dangling modifiers are and, more importantly, how to avoid them. It provides a useful formula for using a modifying phrase to ensure strong sentence construction.

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:00

Thank you We sneak in misplaced modifiers Allah shmoop you're

00:07

driving down a narrow road in the middle of the

00:09

night Suddenly a suicidal deer jumps in front of your

00:12

car There are two ways to break the news to

00:18

your insurance agent You could say a deer just hit

00:21

my car windshield Or a deer hit just my car

00:27

windshield Well welcome to the wonderful world of modifiers If

00:32

you couldn't guess a modifier is a word or phrase

00:34

that modify another word or phrase Yeah sometimes if you're

00:40

not careful you can misplace a modifier A misplaced modifier

00:44

is a modifier that modifies the wrong thing A modifier

00:49

khun b a single word like only just or almost

00:52

let's Look at a couple of examples you could say

00:54

mike ate only venison or mike only ate venison In

00:59

these examples the word on ly modifies the word behind

01:02

it giving these senses completely different meanings if you say

01:06

like a lonely venison what you mean is that mike

01:09

ate nothing but dead dear If you say mike on

01:15

ly ate venison However what you mean is that the

01:18

only thing mike did with the deer meat was eating

01:21

He didn't cook it and he didn't buy it from

01:24

his local grocer You could also use a short phrase

01:31

at the beginning of a sentence as a modifier Here's

01:33

the formula short modifying phrase plus comma Plus the rest

01:39

of the sentence gets you there Just remember whatever the

01:42

modifying phrase were first who should immediately follow the comma

01:46

Here are some examples While you could say freshly cooked

01:51

lisa left the venison said cool down what you really

01:54

mean is freshly cooked the venison was left bite elisa

01:58

to cool them well you might be tempted to say

02:01

covered in flies the highway crew pulled the deer carcass

02:04

off the road What you really mean is covered in

02:07

flies The deer carcass was pulled off the road by

02:10

the highway crew When it comes to modifiers the smartest

02:13

thing you could do is pay attention to what you're

02:16

writing You don't want to misplace a modifier any more

02:20

than you want to misplace any leftover bam really bambi 00:02:26.47 --> [endTime] is that nice

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