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Grammar & Punctuation Videos 93 videos

Affect vs. Effect
10818 Views

This video explains the difference between affect and effect and provide tips for remembering which is which and when to use each one. If you suffe...

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

Long vs. Short Sentences
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Dangling Modifiers 2642 Views


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Description:

This video explains what dangling modifiers are and, more importantly, how to avoid them. It provides a useful formula for using a modifying phrase to ensure strong sentence construction.

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:00

Thank you We sneak in misplaced modifiers Allah shmoop you're

00:07

driving down a narrow road in the middle of the

00:09

night Suddenly a suicidal deer jumps in front of your

00:12

car There are two ways to break the news to

00:18

your insurance agent You could say a deer just hit

00:21

my car windshield Or a deer hit just my car

00:27

windshield Well welcome to the wonderful world of modifiers If

00:32

you couldn't guess a modifier is a word or phrase

00:34

that modify another word or phrase Yeah sometimes if you're

00:40

not careful you can misplace a modifier A misplaced modifier

00:44

is a modifier that modifies the wrong thing A modifier

00:49

khun b a single word like only just or almost

00:52

let's Look at a couple of examples you could say

00:54

mike ate only venison or mike only ate venison In

00:59

these examples the word on ly modifies the word behind

01:02

it giving these senses completely different meanings if you say

01:06

like a lonely venison what you mean is that mike

01:09

ate nothing but dead dear If you say mike on

01:15

ly ate venison However what you mean is that the

01:18

only thing mike did with the deer meat was eating

01:21

He didn't cook it and he didn't buy it from

01:24

his local grocer You could also use a short phrase

01:31

at the beginning of a sentence as a modifier Here's

01:33

the formula short modifying phrase plus comma Plus the rest

01:39

of the sentence gets you there Just remember whatever the

01:42

modifying phrase were first who should immediately follow the comma

01:46

Here are some examples While you could say freshly cooked

01:51

lisa left the venison said cool down what you really

01:54

mean is freshly cooked the venison was left bite elisa

01:58

to cool them well you might be tempted to say

02:01

covered in flies the highway crew pulled the deer carcass

02:04

off the road What you really mean is covered in

02:07

flies The deer carcass was pulled off the road by

02:10

the highway crew When it comes to modifiers the smartest

02:13

thing you could do is pay attention to what you're

02:16

writing You don't want to misplace a modifier any more

02:20

than you want to misplace any leftover bam really bambi 00:02:26.47 --> [endTime] is that nice

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