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Dangling Modifiers Cause Ambiguity

In grammar a dangling modifier or misplaced modifier is a word or phrase that modifies a clause in an ambiguous manner, because it can potentially apply to either the subject or the object of the clause. Dangling modifiers are considered poor style by most style guides.

The following is an example of a dangling modifier (from the 1918 edition of The Elements of Style):

Being in a dilapidaed condition, I was able to buy the house very cheap.

This sentence is ambiguous, as it is not clear whether the speaker or the house was in a dilapidated condition.

As in the examples above, dangling modifiers are often participial in nature. When they are, they are referred to as dangling participles. Adverbial phrases or adverbs can also occur as dangling modifiers.

Sometimes, the antecedent of a dangling modifiers is disambiguated for semantic reasons, even if syntactic reasons are insufficient. For example: “Being asleep, the telephone startled me when it rang.” is unambiguous, because telephones can't be asleep. Even when unambiguous, however, dangling modifiers are still rejected by most style guides. In English and other word-order syntax languages, dangling modifiers can generally be repaired simply by rearranging the word order: “Being asleep, I was startled when the telephone rang.”

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