Do Your Modifiers Dangle?

I think that in the year and a half that I've been blogging, I've avoided one of the subjects most dear to my English-major, editorial heart. But just recently, I've been seeing too many subjects violated--yes, violated--by what is commonly called a dangling, or misplaced, modifier. I can no longer remain silent! If I can help just one of you not to commit this subtle, yet devastating, error of grammar, I will have done my part, and this blog will have served a mighty purpose.

So what, you are asking, is a dangling modifier? Perhaps the best way to explain is to illustrate. So I will pick up my figurative chalk and move to my blogospheric chalkboard and demonstrate:

Driving down the street, Taco Bell looked like a good place to go for dinner.

Besides the obvious issues many of you will probably have with the notion that Taco Bell looks like a good place to go for dinner, there is something much more basic wrong here. So let's back up a bit. Those of you who did briefly pay attention during Mrs. Johnson's eighth-grade English class probably remember that a modifier is something that describes, or qualifies, a noun or pronoun. Modifiers can be a word or a phrase. Usually, in the case of a dangling modifier, a phrase has been badly placed, so that it's not modifying the word it is intended to modify. But a single-word modifier can be misplaced as well.

In our sample sentence above, the modifying phrase is, "Driving down the street." The writer intended to modify, or describe, someone or thing, but the way he or she has written this seems to be suggesting that Taco Bell is driving down the street. Taco Bell is the noun nearest the phrase, and whether we intend it or not, modifiers modify the noun they come closest to. I think that what the writer really intended to communicate was that as a group of people were driving down the street, they saw a Taco Bell, and they determined it would be a good place to go for dinner.

So how do we fix this? One possibility is this: As we drove down the street, we decided that Taco Bell looked like a good place to go for dinner. The phrase has been turned into an adverb phrase that modifies, answering the question "when." If we want to keep the phrase a phrase that modifies a noun or pronoun, we could write it like this: Driving down the street, we decided that Taco Bell would be a great place to go for dinner. Probably the first option is better stylistically, but at least this is grammatically correct.

Here are some humorous examples of what can happen when writers carelessly dangle their modifiers.

Having finished my dinner, the waitress offered to bring out the dessert tray. (That's service! Not only does she bring the meal, she eats it too!)

Removing each other's fleas, the zoo workers watched the monkeys intently. (Kind of makes you wonder what the monkeys were doing.)

After rotting in the cellar for weeks, my brother brought up some oranges. (Either it's a miracle that brother brought oranges up, or he badly needs a shower.)

Finally, what does the picture of the house have to do with Taco Bell or modifiers--placed or misplaced--or rotting brothers? Nothing at all. And yet one more correctly written sentence will explain: Having considered several houses, Henry and Annette decided that this lovely colonial style would be the best for their family.

And who said grammar is boring? Not me, or I, or . . . I didn't!