Misplaced Modifiers
Archives: Copywriting
Consider these passages, which I found in prominent newspapers:
• “Only the pursuit of ‘diversity’ by higher education meets the strict constitutional test for race preferences. As a lawyer, I am sure that Mr. Obama must know this.”
Is the lawyer the writer – or the president-elect?
• “[Jeremy] Piven, who grew up in a Chicago theater family, knew [David] Mamet as a child… .”
Which one was the child?
• “It took three phone calls to find this Dior dress in Elle.”
Were the calls to determine which page of the magazine the garment was on – or to locate the store that carried it?
The above excerpts are examples of the problems caused by misplaced modifiers. They are ambiguous and confusing, which confirms the rule that sloppy writing makes for poor communication.
In The Careful Writer, Theodore M. Bernstein offers good advice: “There is no rule about the placement of modifying phrases excerpt perhaps the very general one that they should be as close as possible to the things they modify.” Applying this simple guideline often solves the problem. To convey what the writer probably meant, the first example could be reworded this way: “I am sure that Mr. Obama, a lawyer, must know this.”
I’m a lifelong blooper collector, so I especially relish misplaced modifiers that produce unintentionally amusing results. A classic example from a commercial in a live radio broadcast years ago: “Ladies, now you can buy a bathing suit for a ridiculous figure.”
[Ed Note: For more than three decades, Don Hauptman was an award-winning independent direct-response copywriter and creative consultant. He is author of The Versatile Freelancer, an e-book recently published by AWAI that shows writers and other creative professionals how to diversify their careers into speaking, consulting, training, and critiquing.]
Hi,
I was editor of our town’s newspaper for 10 years and we had some amazing bloopers come in. The most common one was ‘there were 20 odd people at the event’. Just how odd were they!
My favorite though was a headline in another national newspaper which stated that due to the poor season, ‘a farmer commits suicide every week’. This was picked up and debated on national TV but not one of the experts questioned how this poor farmer could keep committing suicide every week. I really felt sorry for that poor farmer and his family. Imagine having to go through that every week adfinitum! It is a very sad statistic but could no-one see the error??
Hello. Amusing stuff. I too am a copyeditor and I run a blog that highlights Criminal Sentences pulled from books and other places. Please vote on this week’s poll!
I also wrote a writing guide, The Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier.
Keep up the good work!
Bonnie Trenga