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Misplaced Modifiers 3082 Views


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Want even more deets on misplaced modifiers? Click here to review. Or take a look at our entire grammar section for all the goods.

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00:04

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

00:09

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

00:16

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

00:20

just hit my windshield!"...

00:23

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

00:32

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

00:38

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

00:44

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

00:50

"just", or "almost".

00:52

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

00:56

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

00:59

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

01:03

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

01:08

you mean is that Mike ate nothing but dead deer.

01:14

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

01:19

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

01:22

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

01:29

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

01:35

short modifying phrase...

01:37

...plus comma...

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...plus the rest of the sentence.

01:41

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

01:45

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

01:52

cool down"...

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

02:00

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

02:04

carcass off the road"...

02:05

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

02:09

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

02:14

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

02:16

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

02:19

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

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