Written by Martin Wiles

I remember them well. Three small, super bouncy balls. The kind once found in gumball machines located at the entrance or exit of almost every retail and grocery store. The type that tempted small children and forced their parents and grandparents to insert coins to appease their kids rather than have the child create a scene.

And my beloved grandmother had fallen prey to my pleading to get me three. When I got to her house, I went to bouncing. Well, actually, I only bounced once. The balls scattered in every direction imaginable, and I never saw them again. My grandmother and I searched every nook and cranny in her old home only to find absolutely nothing. I was an elementary-aged boy then, but until the day my grandparents sold the home, we never discovered the balls.

Sometimes, misplaced and dangling modifiers are equally challenging to find. Misplaced or lost may be a matter of semantics. To me, the balls were lost. To the balls—if they could think—they were merely misplaced.

In the world of grammar—which naturally includes the world of editing—modifiers include adjectives and adverbs. Adjectives modify nouns and pronouns, while adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs. But both come in more than the single-word variety. They include phrases of various types and dependent clauses. Regardless of what they entail, they all give us ammunition to vary our sentence structure. But when they are misplaced, the sentence miscommunicates or communicates a ludicrous meaning.

Like my super bouncy balls, these misplaced modifiers can tax writers’ and editors’ brains. That’s because our brains tend to do a remarkable thing: They correct the sentence in our understanding even when it is incorrect.

Knowing where these modifiers should be placed is essential, as well as making sure we’re in editor mode when editing.

Single adjectives can be placed after a linking verb as a predicate adjective, immediately following a noun as an appositive, or more commonly before a noun or pronoun. Phrases should follow the noun or pronoun they modify. Adjective clauses should come in the middle or end of a sentence, but always after the noun or pronoun they modify.

Following is an example of a misplaced modifier: The black truck stopped alongside the road with one tire.

As placed, the modifier means the road had one tire instead of the truck.

The sentence should be written as follows: “The truck with one tire stopped alongside the road.”

Single adverbs that modify verbs can come before or after the verb. But when they modify an adjective or another adverb, they should be placed before them. Depending on what we want to communicate, adverbial phrases and clauses can be placed anywhere in the sentence.

Example: The boy sat on the bench with red hair.

The sentence should read, “The boy with the red hair sat on the bench.”

Communication is the name of the game in writing, and editors have the incredible privilege of helping writers find misplaced modifiers so that they communicate well.

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