Write Clearly: Grammar

In this guide, bold font and parentheses are used to draw attention to modifiers. Screen Reader Users: Please set your program's punctuation level to 'most' or 'all' in order to hear the content in parentheses.

A modifier is a word, phrase, or clause that provides description.

When you place modifiers too far away from the words that they modify, you change the meaning of the sentence, creating what is called a misplaced modifier error.

Examples:

• Confusing: The supervisor told me they needed someone who could type badly (modifier).
  • Is the supervisor's need urgent, or does the supervisor need someone who struggles with typing?
• Better: The supervisor told me they badly needed someone who could type.

• Confusing: The mouse was found by a farmer lying (modifier) in the field.
  • Who was lying in the field, the mouse or the farmer?
• Better: The mouse lying in the field was found by a farmer.
• Or: A farmer found the mouse lying in the field.

If you use a modifier at the beginning of your sentence to modify a word other than the subject of your sentence, you create a misplaced modifier error.

Example:

• Confusing: Wearing (modifier) high boots, the snake failed to injure the supervisor.
  • Is the snake wearing high boots?
• Better: Wearing high boots, the supervisor was protected from the snake.
• Or: Because the supervisor was wearing high boots, the snake did not injure her.

If you do not include this word or phrase in your sentence, you create a dangling modifier error.

Example:

• Confusing: While conducting (modifier) a survey of cetaceans in the western North Atlantic, a dead dolphin was spotted a few miles away from an oil spill.
  • Was the dolphin conducting the survey?
• Better: While conducting a survey of cetaceans in the western North Atlantic, researchers spotted a dead dolphin a few miles away from an oil spill.