| Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993. |
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| DANGLING MODIFIERS |
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| which include dangling phrases of various kinds—dangling gerunds, dangling infinitives, dangling participles, and just plain danglers—as well as misplaced or misrelated modifiers, are much criticized but much used and frequently unnoticed too. The most typical is the dangling participial modifier, as in Opening the front door, the clock struck midnight. The participial modifier is a saver of time and space, in that it replaces a full clause of some sort—When I opened the front door, for example, in the preceding sentence—but in making the transformation to a participial phrase, the speaker or the writer of unrevised or unedited prose may shift ground on reaching the second clause. In the example, clock became the subject, instead of I, and our grammatical expectation is that the implied subject of the modifier must be clock too. With dangling infinitives, dangling gerunds, and the like, the problem is essentially the same: the grammar of the sentence is at least technically ambiguous. This sort of usage gaffe is most likely to be noticed in Formal writing, less so in speech, and particularly less so at the lower levels of speech. Dangling modifiers of all sorts have long managed to get by in the best English and American literary company without being noticed. If meaning is clear from context, often no one notices the ambiguity, but if there is anything possibly ludicrous in one of the grammatical alternatives, the reader may very well discover it, even though a listener might miss it. It’s the funny ones that cause trouble. Best advice: when writing Formally, make certain that the implied subject of the phrase modifier has the same referent as the stated subject of the main clause it modifies: not Hurrying up the stairs, the door was locked, but Hurrying up the stairs, I found that the door was locked. You will continue to create many technically dangling modifiers in your speech and Informal writing, and most of them will pass unnoticed. Just don’t get caught: the traffic sign Stop When Flashing and the manufacturer’s instruction Shake Before Using are both danglers and when noticed cause unintended amusement. | 1 |
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| | | The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. Copyright © 1993 Columbia University Press. |
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