ShmoopTube

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Misplaced modifiers, a la Shmoop. You're driving down a narrow road in the middle

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of the night. Suddenly, a suicidal deer jumps in front of your car.

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There are two ways to break the news to your insurance agent. You could say, "A deer

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just hit my windshield!"...

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...or, "A deer hit just my windshield!" Welcome to the wonderful world of modifiers!

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If you couldn't guess, a modifier is a word or phrase that modifies another word or phrase.

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Sometimes, if you're not careful, you can misplace a modifier. A misplaced modifier

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is a modifier that modifies the wrong thing. A modifier can be a single word, like "only",

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"just", or "almost".

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Let's look at a couple of examples. You could say, "Mike ate only venison"...

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...or, "Mike only ate venison."

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In these examples, the word "only" modifies the word behind it, giving these sentences

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completely different meanings. If you say, "Mike ate only venison", what

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you mean is that Mike ate nothing but dead deer.

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If you say, "Mike only ate venison", however, what you mean is that the only thing Mike

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did with the deer meat was eat it. He didn't cook it...

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...and he didn't buy it from his local grocer.

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You could also use a short phrase at the beginning of a sentence as a modifier. Here's the formula:

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short modifying phrase...

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...plus comma...

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...plus the rest of the sentence.

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Just remember, whatever the modifying phrase refers to should immediately follow the comma.

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Here are some examples. While you could say, "Freshly cooked, Lisa left the venison to

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cool down"...

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...what you really mean is, "Freshly cooked, the venison was left by Lisa to cool down."

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While you might be tempted to say, "Covered in flies, the highway crew pulled the deer

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carcass off the road"...

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...what you really mean is, "Covered in flies, the deer carcass was pulled off the

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road by the highway crew." When it comes to modifiers, the smartest thing

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you can do is to pay attention to what you're writing.

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You don't want to misplace a modifier...

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...any more than you'd want to misplace any leftovers.

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