Helps for Dangling and Misplaced Modifiers

 

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_dangmod.html

 

http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000012.htm

 

http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000011.htm

 

 

Now work with the following sentences: identify the dangling or misplaced modifiers and revise the sentences so they are logical.

 

1.    Although among the most famous of reptiles, biologists have only recently begun to study rattlesnakes.

 

 

2.    The deadly snakes, which take their name from the two characteristic pits on their snouts, belong to the family of pit vipers.

 

 

3.    After studying the habits of pit vipers, the pits, which serve as infrared sensors and enable the snakes to see heat, evolved to detect danger rather than to hunt prey.

 

 

4.    Given their lethal capabilities, it is not surprising that pit vipers are universally loathed.

 

 

5.    Despite their fearful reputation, however, people are seldom bitten by the snakes unless provoked.

 

 

 

In the following sentences look for adverbs which are misplaced.

 

1.    People who attend the theater regularly complain that the manners of the average audience are in severe decline.

 

 

2.    Far from listening in respectful if not attentive silence, he broadcasts a running commentary frequently modeled, no doubt, on his behavior in front of the television at home.

 

 

3.    Sitting next to a woman who spends most of the evening unwrapping cellophane-covered candies slowly can provoke even the most saintly theatergoer to violence.

 

 

4.    Cellular phones, beepers, and wristwatch alarms even go off intermittently causing an evening in the theater to resemble a trip to an electronics store.

 

 

5. For their part, actors marvel at how today's audiences only manage to cough during the quietest moments of a play.