Some random August ramblings

In Britain, August is known in the media world as the silly season. Politicians and business people etc are away on holiday, but journalists still have to find something to write about. The result is that newspapers are full of silly stories which wouldn't see the light of day at other times of the year.

It's a bit the same in my teaching world. Most of my students are away on holiday, so I have a bit of time to fill this blog with 'silly stories'. Anyway, what's the point of having a blog if you can't spout off occasionally? Here are a few things I've noticed recently on the blogosphere.

Exploring misplaced and dangling modifiers

This is my attempt to get to grips with the subject of misplaced and dangling modifiers. I freely admit to being at the edge of my comfort zone here, and to not necessarily knowing all the answers. But although my opinions may be a bit wobbly, I don't think I've made any huge errors.

This is quite a detailed exploration, so you might want to dip in and out rather than take it all in at one sitting.

We will look at the following aspects using the occasional exercise for illustration:

• What is a modifier?
• The placing of modifiers
• Is it misplaced or simply dangling?
• Misplaced modifiers, and how to avoid them
• Different types of dangling modifiers
• Dangling participles, and how to fix them
• Identifying dangling modifiers
• What is a squinting modifier?
• Some natural sounding danglers
• Two case studies from language blogs