How to Identify Dangling or Misplaced Modifier in Sentences

The significance or importance of English in people’s lives is something we all are aware of. But while learning this language or taking a command most people get confused with grammar. They try to form a sentence which ends up been grammatically incorrect. These are not very huge mistakes or blunders but small ones which have the potential to change the entire meaning of the sentence.

This is the reason why people are so scared of Grammar.

But first, we need to understand that what do me actually mean by modifiers. These are words and clauses that can be used to add a description to the sentences. You would be able to find a modifier that can snuggle right beside your sentences. To know it, you will have to take a one-word adjective and see how the flow of the sentence goes.

Similarly, all the multi-word phrase and clauses go right next to the word that will help them to describe.

Examples of Misplaced or Dangling Modifiers 

Here are some examples which sound funny when you hear them. They are incorrect and the reason is explained after the given example.

 1. Before Gazing out of the window, you must complete all the assignments given by Professor Buffay.

In this example, you would see that there is a participle phrase that describes the noun it follows.

2. Your boy just gobbled all the sandwiches which were made from soggy tomatoes and then rushed down to the bus.

In the above statement, the adjective clause will follow the noun before it.

3. There is a hurricane in the city and you can watch all the trees and its branches moving with the strong breeze.

If you are waving in a strong breeze in all the particular phase and it will describe the branches and noun in the front. You will sometimes see that writers place all the different sort of modifiers which would be able to describe. It might create some kind of confusion and be a misplaced modifier. It is actually an error which needs to be corrected.

4. There is all churning in the Atlantic Ocean and it was anxiously watched the weather report with all the information.

So here we can see that the participle phrase is describing all the pronoun.

 

What is the Meaning of Dangling Modifiers ?

Now we need to check about the Dangling Modifiers.

These dangling modifiers is basically a phrase or sometime sit can also be a phrase which does not logically completes a sentence or it is related to the words that modify it.

Here you need to check two things about it that cannot be simply used to while changing the modifiers:

  • They are not like misplaced modifiers, it is a dangling modifier that cannot be corrected.
  • These dangling modifiers would always be appearing at the beginning of the sentence or a sentence fragment.

 

How do you find a dangling modifier?

If you are a writer, then your main aim or focus should be on the distance that separates the modifier from its actual target. Hence in this way, you would be able to identify a misplaced modifier.

For example,

You will need a pipe to suck out the warm water from the rubber hose.

Here again, we would be witnessing a participle phrase but the noun of the sentence is quite far from it. So the phrase or word becomes a misplaced modifier.

Once you have known what a misplaced modifier is and how you can identify it then the only thing that is left is what would be the solution.

Being a writer or reader it won’t be hard for you to understand that dangling modifier or misplaced modifiers make the entire sentence awkward and difficult to understand. So to keep the sentences clear and straightforward, you will rearrange the sentence and untangle it to make it sense correctly.

Conclusion:

With this, EnglishBix website will always help you out in your difficult times while you would be learning to have a command over the language.

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