Lesson: English Grammar - 07

Modifiers - The Golden Rule

[Page 7 of 28]

Now, modifiers are used incorrectly very often - in published materials, in daily conversation, in textbooks, and so on. As a result, before you can start judging whether modifiers are correctly used, you will probably need practice at simply identifying the common errors. Here's the good news: modifier problems are very easy to fix because they always need to be fixed in exactly the same way. Remember the golden rule: the modifier needs to be as close as possible to the person or thing that it modifies.

Look at the two sentences below and decide which one is correct:

Example 1: After crying for two consecutive hours, the mother finally put the baby to sleep.
Example 2: After crying for two consecutive hours, the baby finally fell asleep.

What's the modifier? It's the phrase "After crying for two consecutive hours," and it clearly refers to a person, but we need more of the sentence to figure out who it modifies. Is it logical that the mother cried for two hours? Surely it seems plausible, especially given the circumstances, but the fact that the mother "finally put the baby to sleep" indicates that it's the baby who's been struggling in this sentence. Therefore, sentence 2 is correct because it places "baby" right next to the phrase which modifies it.

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