Much of grammar is pretty serious business. You don't see many English teachers with facial laugh lines except in businesses that sell controlled substances.That's because there's a certain tight-lipped grimness involved in scanning compositions in order to find mistake; but check out your local liquor store or neighborhood pub sometimes. There you will find jaded, browbeaten teachers laughing and cavorting the night away. . It's like, "Yes, we don't have to assign blame here. We are free--free of all responsibility." There is one area, however, which will make even the most guilt-ridden grammarian laugh. That's dangling modifiers. If someone makes an error with a dangling modifier, the results can be hilarious. Take a look at these examples:


1. After putting a worm on my hook, the fish began to bite.
2. Being made of glass, Rick handled the tabletop carefully.
3. By the age of fourteen, both of Jackson's parents had died.
4. When in diapers, my mother remarried.


As you can see, dangling modifiers can elicit snorts of hysterical mirth. Of course, as a writer you don't want people to laugh at you, so how are you going to avoid the dilemma of dangling modifiers? Well, let's look at those examples again to see why they didn't express what the writer wanted to say. In the third sentence, "by the age of fourteen" seems to be modifying "both of Jackson's parents." Logically that can't be because a man's parents aren't likely to die when they are fourteen years old. What the writer meant, of course, was that Jackson was fourteen years old. The sentence can be corrected in this way: By the time Jackson was fourteen years old, both of his parents had died.


In the fourth sentence, "when in diapers" seems to refer to "my mother," but that doesn't make sense. You know that a woman can't marry for the second time when she is still in diapers.The sentence can be corrected in this way: When I was in diapers, my mother remarried. How would you change sentences one and two to eliminate the dangling modifiers?



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