Misplaced Modifiers
Misplaced Modifiers
How to Identify
As with all Standard English Conventions questions, you'll start by looking at the answer choices. Whereas most Standard English questions have answer choices with very few words, these questions will have much longer answer choices, maybe around 10 words or so. In addition to the length of the answer choices, you'll also notice that the order of the words is all over the place between choices. In particular, the subject (the noun performing the main verb) will be different at least between some of the choices.
Example Question
What's a Misplaced Modifier?
Let's start with what a modifier is. A modifier is a word or phrase that provides additional information about a noun or verb. For example, take the sentence "Dressed in his best suit, Jeremy headed out for his interview." In this sentence, "dressed in his best suit" is a modifier because it provides additional information about Jeremy.
A misplaced modifier is a modifier that is placed in a location that does not logically belong. For example, "Walking down the street, the sunset looked beautiful to John." In this sentence, "walking down the street" is a modifier that would logically be describing John, but it's placed in the sentence in a way that makes it seem like it's describing the sunset. A correct version of this sentence would be "Walking down the street, John noticed that the sunset looked beautiful." In the correct version, the modifier is placed directly adjacent to the noun (John) it's describing.
How to Approach
On these problems, there will always be a modifying clause that ends with a comma right before the blank. Just ask yourself who or what that modifying clause would logically be describing. You can peruse the answer choices and look at all the nouns present in the answer choices, and ask whether that noun makes logical sense as the person or thing being described. The correct answer will be the one that leads off with that noun, and has it being the subject of the main verb in the sentence.
In the example problem above, the modifying clause is "Far from being modern inventions". Looking through the answer choices, we want to look for a noun that might be the inventions that are being described by that clause. The only noun in any of the answer choices that would make sense to interpret as "inventions" is "drinking straws". Therefore, the correct answer should have drinking straws as the subject performing the main verb. This typically means that "drinking straws" should come right after the comma.
Beware of Possessives
Let's take the sentence "Already late for work, John's car decided it didn't want to start." In this sentence, the modifying clause is "Already late for work". Seeing that John is the first word after the comma, it might seem like we're all good. But it's important to notice the possessive apostrophe in "John's". This means makes the subject not John himself, but John's car. So this sentence is actually incorrect, since the modifier describes John, but his car is the subject. A correct version of this sentence would be "Already late for work, John was unable to start his car."