Misplaced Modifiers

Today's topic: Misplaced modifiers

The poor, beleaguered misplaced modifier is one of the top ten grammar victims I see on a regular basis.  This is also one of the more unfortunate grammar mistakes, because it has the potential to muddy your meaning and confuse your readers.

What's a modifier?

A modifier is a word or phrase that describes/refers to (or "modifies") another word or phrase.  I borrowed this first example from Internet "Grammar Girl" Mignon Fogerty:

In these two sentences, the modifier is the word "almost."  These two sentences mean very different things:

I almost failed every art class I took.

I failed almost every art class I took.

Sentence one means that the author has almost failed each art class she has taken.  She ALMOST failed them, but she managed to squeak by.

Sentence two means that the author failed MOST art classes she took, but passed one or two.

Of course, not all modifiers are one-word; some are phrases.  Examples of some longer, trickier modifiers:

*The patient had a history of post-traumatic stress and sleep disruptions prior to his diagnoses of diabetes and hypertension, which he had managed with medication over a period of five years.

In the sentence above, it's impossible to tell whether the modifier "which he had managed with medication over a period of five years" refers to the phrase "post-traumatic stress and sleep disruptions," or to the phrase "diabetes and hypertension."  It could easily be either. 

The author could rewrite this sentence in any number of ways in order to fix the misplaced modifier.  A couple of options (there are plenty of others):

In addition to his diagnoses of diabetes and hypertension, the patient had a history of post-traumatic stress and sleep disruptions which he had managed with medication for five years.  

In addition to his diagnoses of diabetes and hypertension, the patient had a five-year history of post-traumatic stress and sleep disruptions, which he managed with medication.

*The clinic offers professional development workshops hosted by nursing staff and faculty relating to acute care.

In the sentence above, we can't tell whether the modifier "relating to acute care" refers to the professional development workshops or the staff/faculty who host the workshops.

As with the previous example, this author could rewrite this sentence in any number of ways.  A couple of options:

The clinic offers professional development workshops, hosted by nursing staff and faculty, on a variety of topics in acute care.

The clinic offers acute care professional development workshops hosted by nursing staff and faculty.

In general, it's a good idea to put modifiers as close as possible to the words or phrases you want them to modify.  Sometimes it can be tricky to do this (especially if your sentence is especially long or complex).  In this case it might be a good idea to divide the sentence into more than one. 

One way to help ensure that you don't end up with misplaced modifiers is to read your work aloud when you proofread.  When we read silently we don't really hear our sentences.  We get the gist, but we don't get a good sense of sentence structure.  When we read aloud, we read EVERY WORD.  When there's a problem, even if we don't recognize the specific grammar rule we're breaking, we know that something doesn't sound right.  It's easy to miss bad sentence structure when we read silently; it's much easier to catch those problems when we read out loud.

Keep an eye out for misplaced modifiers when you read your work.  Always aim for clarity and conciseness.

I hope this has been helpful.  As always, happy scribbling!

Whitney Kurtz-Ogilvie, MFAW