ShmoopTube

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Here’s your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by special spider oils.

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Remind us not to order these the next time we get a massage.

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For the sake of logic and coherence, the word “often” should be placed where??

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And here are the potential answers...

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This question requires us to pull out a grammatical rule that’s an old trusty standby.

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Here it is: it’s best to place a modifier as close as possible to the word it modifies.

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Sure, it’s simple, but sometimes it can be a little tricky to figure out exactly which

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word the modifier should describe.

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Option (B), for example, is very confused.

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It suggests placing the adverb “often” before the conjunction “but.”

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Adverbs can only modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs, so this one’s a definite no.

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P.S. We refrained from making a butt joke just now because it’s beneath us.

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Choice (D) does suggest that “often” describe a verb. Too bad it’s the wrong one, though.

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By saying that spiders “often avoid” getting entangled in their webs

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it actually implies that they sometimes do get entangled.

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We know several spiders who would be very offended by this notion, so we’ll cross out (D).

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This brings us to options (A) and (C), which might be a little hard to choose between.

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Choice (A) claims that “made people wonder often” is fine,

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while (C) prefers “often made people wonder.”

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Of the two, option (C) is better, because “often”

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is trying to describe the verb “made” not “wonder.”

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It's not that people wonder often about this question, but rather that when the topic of

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spider webs does come up (which probably isn't that often), they sometimes wonder about it.

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We slightly resent this question because it’s going to make us wonder about this topic all day.

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