MLP: Two heads better than one

Your Mrs. Language Person is a true word nerd. That which makes others guffaw only raises her eyebrow. It’s misplaced modifiers that are her great gut-busters (or her great-gut busters; MLP’s gut is of a certain age, after all).

The Snitty Old Biddy savors side-splitting switcheroos.

“Pig born to farmer with two heads.” (Do two heads make the farmer doubly smart? Not to mention a symbiotic scientific marvel.)

“Truck reported stolen by police yesterday.” (And the officer accused of theft!)

“Her mother died in the home she was born in yesterday.” (You weren’t born yesterday, Dear Reader, so you know no mother can be a day old.)

Let’s try those another way, placing the modifying words closer to those they were intended to modify:

“Pig with two heads born to farmer.” (Hmm. Your MLP also quibbles with “born to farmer,” but she’ll let it go this time.)

“Stolen truck reported yesterday by police.” (Whew; there’s a narrow escape from a libel suit.)

“Yesterday, her mother died in the home she was born in,” or, to spare a preposition from dangling, “in which she was born.” (Thus ends the disturbing image of an infant mother.)

Sometimes a modifier’s misplacement is not so obvious, potentially true but nevertheless ambiguous. Less comedy than confusion are the following “squinting modifiers:”

“Hillary told Jordan when the game was over she would pick him up.”

Now, did Hillary tell Jordan something when the game was over, or did she tell him at another time that she would pick him up after the game? We wouldn’t want the poor kid to be left standing, especially after expending all that energy.

Moving the modifying phrase makes things much clearer:

“When the game was over, Hillary told Jordan she would pick him up (at a specific place or time)” or “Hillary told Jordan (that) she would pick him up when the game was over.”

One path to better grammar is to think in terms of marriage; nobody likes a breakup. MLP advises keeping modifiers as close as possible to the noun, or phrase they’re meant to modify. To split a verb, for example, is simply awkward; let nothing come between primary and auxiliary verbs:

“MLP may in this dreary column have a point, but it’s still her typical snore fest.”

No ambiguity there, but it doesn’t sound as clean as “MLP may have a point in this dreary column …”

No buts, Dear Reader. When you have “may have,” “will do,” “are going,” and other such compound verbs, please keep them together. Allowing nothing to come between them makes a stronger word union.

However, a little breathing distance with an adjective does little harm.

Consider that hotly debated split infinitive. To boldly go, or to go boldly? Is to drearily write any worse than to write drearily? The Snitty Old Biddy answer is yes, it is worse (if not actually incorrect). Infinitives may be stronger together, but if you must split, the modern take is that it is, at least technically, not as incorrect as the awkward structure of this shameful sentence.

Nor is it wise to dangle a misplaced modifier, lest comedy be your intent:

“Sipping cocktails on the veranda, the moon was magnificent.”

Any moon-sipping cocktails must be magnificently drunk.

Finally, a joke entirely unrelated to misplaced modifiers, yet too funny for your MLP not to share. Submitted by Dear Reader E. Rose:

“Synonym rolls. Like Grammar used to make.”

Keep laughing, word nerds.

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Mrs. Language Person and Sholeh Patrick are columnists for the Hagadone News Network who have an odd sense of humor. Send corrections, criticism, and comedic inspiration to Sholeh@cdapress.com.