How misused modifiers can hurt your writing - Emma Bryce
View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-misused-modifiers-can-hurt-your-writing-emma-bryce Modifiers are words, phrases, and clauses that add information about other parts of a sentence—...
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This just in: "Thief robs town with world's largest chocolate bunny." Wait, so are we talking about this, or this? That's a classic case of a misplaced modifier, a common grammatical mistake that can dramatically change the meaning of a sentence. And lest you think this is a bit far-fetched, confusing headlines like this appear all the time. Modifiers are words, phrases, and clauses that add information about other parts of a sentence, which is usually helpful. But when modifiers aren't linked clearly enough to the words they're actually referring to, they can create unintentional ambiguity. That happens because the modifying words, in this case, "with world's largest chocolate bunny," modify the ...
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This just in: "Thief robs town with world's largest chocolate bunny." Wait, so are we talking about this, or this? That's a classic case of a misplaced modifier, a common grammatical mistake that can dramatically change the meaning of a sentence. And lest you think this is a bit far-fetched, confusing headlines like this appear all the time. Modifiers are words, phrases, and clauses that add information about other parts of a sentence, which is usually helpful. But when modifiers aren't linked clearly enough to the words they're actually referring to, they can create unintentional ambiguity. That happens because the modifying words, in this case, "with world's largest chocolate bunny," modify the ...
