As conference season begins for me this weekend, we are often asked to provide a list of writing resources we recommend.
Proofreading Secrets of Bestselling Authors by Kathy Ide is on my list.
Kathy offers us a helpful tip here.
As
a writer, words and punctuation marks are the tools of your trade.
Right? Actually … wrong! Grammatically, anyway.
When you start a sentence with a
modifying word or phrase, the subject of the sentence is what has to be
modified by that word or phrase. An introductory phrase that doesn’t modify the
appropriate word is called a “dangling modifier.”
The opening phrase in the above
sentence is “As a writer.” The subject of the sentence is “Words and punctuation
marks.” Since words and punctuation marks are not “a writer,” we’d need to rewrite
that to something like “Words and punctuation marks are a writer’s tools of the
trade.”
Now that you’ve been reminded of a
rule you probably barely paid attention to in high school, let’s try a tricky example:
Six months after attending Mount Hermon, Kim’s article was
accepted by a publisher.
“Kim’s article” did not attend Mount
Hermon. So you’d want to rewrite that too.
Timing is crucial when it comes to
modifiers. Any action in the introductory phrase must be accomplished at the same time as the action in the
rest of the sentence. For example:
Hugging the postman, Delilah ripped
open the box containing her new novel.
Delilah cannot simultaneously hug
the postman and rip open a box.
Once you get a handle on these dangling dilly-dallies,
you’ll be spotting them everywhere!
Maybe even in your own writing.
1 comment:
Yes, I've been busted for dangline modifiers a few times. Now I see there's another book I must own!
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