Grammar Snacks: Beware of the Dangler

How many of you can relate to the following scenario? After a marathon client meeting you hustle into the bathroom to relieve a bladder overstimulated by that half-pot of coffee you gulped down. You give a glance in the mirror before reaching your porcelain destination. Something catches your eye. You stop. A wave of hot terror flushes your cheeks. You rush toward the mirror for a closer look. And there it is, something unsightly, and green, dangling from your nose. You marvel at its size before full-blown panic sets in. Your mind swims: “How long has it been there? Who’s seen it? Why didn’t anyone tell me?” (Don’t kid yourself. Everyone saw it, and they didn’t tell you because they’re not true friends. Remember that for when you see any of them sporting a nostril dangler.)
 

There’s a similar occurrence in writing. And though it may not be as apparent, it’s just as embarrassing. This booger of sentence construction is called the dangling modifier, a.k.a. “the dangler.” A dangling modifier occurs when a word or phrase describes something not present in the sentence, or when a word or phrase is positioned too far from the word it modifies. Besides being ungrammatical, a dangling modifier changes an author’s intended meaning and creates confusion. For example:

Seeking to improve employee utilization, the office kegerator was replenished with Four Loko.

The dangler in this example is the participial phrase, Seeking to improve employee utilization, modifying the subject, kegerator. But kegerator isn’t the intended subject; it isn’t seeking to improve employee utilization—it only wants to be utilized. The dangler is referring to a person (or group) doing the seeking. To fix the sentence, simply replace kegerator with the intended subject, make the verb active, and shift kegerator to its rightful place as the direct object. Here is the corrected sentence:

Seeking to improve employee utilization, Tom Stankus replenished the office kegerator with Four Loko.

How about another example:

Comfortable in their ignorance of grammar and their phonetic approach to spelling, the tea partyers’ protest placards confused more than enlightened.

Indeed, the placards aren’t the ones enjoying the comfort of their ignorance. (They’re more likely to be bummed about being defaced with such obnoxious rhetoric.) No, the opening phrase speaks to the tea partyers themselves. Therefore:

Comfortable in their ignorance of grammar and their phonetic approach to spelling, the tea partyers waved protest placards that confused more than enlightened.

We’ll revisit the dangling modifier and its close cohort, the misplaced modifier, in a future post. As for avoiding nose danglers, you can choose your level of vigilance. You might try carrying a pocket-sized mirror and discreetly checking your nose every five minutes. Alternate doing that with wiping your snout with a tissue. And sniffle. A lot. Just don’t pick.