Some dangling modifiers okay?
In this sentence, there's a dangling modifier:
- Researching the issue, it became clear the courts had not addressed the question.
But in The Fight for English, David Crystal says we're bent out of shape over nothing. No one in a million years, he says, would be confused here. It's obvious that an unnamed author is understood. Sure, dangling modifiers sometimes cause ambiguity:
- Surrounded by barbed wire, armed soldiers guarded the prisoners from watchtowers.
What do you think?
David Crystal, The Fight for English: How Language Pundits Ate, Shot, and Left
153 (Oxford U. Press 2006).
7 Comments:
I agree with Mr. Crystal: I was not confused after reading the sentence. But what irks me most about the sentence is its eloquent variation: 'issue' followed by 'question.' I would instead write: "Researching the issue, it became clear that the courts had not addressed the issue." Or, "Researching the question, it became clear that the courts had not answered the question."
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I was not confused by the first example, but I would still fix the misplaced modifier. Even though I I understood what the sentence meant, I had to think about it for a tiny fraction of a second longer than I should have. I think writers should think very carefully before they make their readers do extra work. And misplaced modifiers are not something you use for effect; they are a sign of laziness.
In fact, Mr. Crystal seems more concerned with respecting writers' feelings than with making readers' jobs easier. But I want to make my readers’ lives as easy as possible. That is why I think misplaced modifiers should be avoided, but I have no problem starting sentences with conjunctions, ending them with prepositions, or splitting infinitives. These devices make a reader’s job easier because the resulting prose is looser and more idiomatic.
Not so misplaced modifiers. They introduce possible miscues, and I reject the suggestion that they are idiomatic just because (1) we can usually understand what the writer means and (2) they frequently litter the prose of lazy and inexperienced writers.
Well . . . umm . . . ya know . . . we don't hardly need to follow all these old rules if people can . . . ya know . . . understand what we're saying without them. Ya know . . . demanding that we follow these old rules is . . . like . . . just some plot by a bunch of Anglos to make people of color seem like their not so well educated. I mean . . . it's like . . . blatant oppression. Ya know what I mean?
Seriously, we can find many examples of poor English that work just fine. Sometimes, it's pretty clear what some dangling participle modifies. Other times, it's not so clear at all.
The reason attorneys should pay close attention to this rule, and others, is so they don't ever get caught in a situation where people are debating what the heck they meant.
Know what I mean?
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