0

I'm concerned that I'm developing a hypersensitivity to dangling modifiers, even if they don't dangle very much.

For context, I have the following sentence:

"From the edge of the rice paddy, Richard watched a man he did not recognize drag a woman he did through the water by her hair."

Stacking prepositional phrases like "through the water" and "by her hair" seems likely to lead to dangling modifiers (i.e., is the water by her hair, or was she dragged by her hair?), but, as I wrote, I suspect I'm overly sensitive to dangling modifiers.

My question is: "If the meaning of the sentence is clear, is the modifier dangling?"

I can think of a couple of different ways to make this sentence more "clear", like

-"From the edge of the rice paddy, Richard watched a man he did not recognize drag a woman he did by her hair and through the water." (I like this one the best, but the construction seems formal)

-"From the edge of the rice paddy, Richard watched a man he did not recognize drag a woman he did by her hair through the water."

-"From the edge of the rice paddy, Richard watched a man he did not recognize drag a woman he did through the water. He dragged her by the hair."

How would you handle this?

SwabianOrtolan
  • 3
  • 3
    The original conveys what you intended. – Lawrence Sep 21 '17 at 14:38
  • 2
    There has already been a post on ELU in which an article by G Pullum, if I remember correctly, says that dangling modifiers are only of real concern if they lead to actual ambiguity (not an unwanted reading having a 0.01% probability of being the intended one). This makes "If the meaning of the sentence is clear, is the modifier dangling?" irrelevant; the only question worth asking is "Is the meaning clear?" / "From the edge of the rice paddy, Richard watched a man he did not recognize drag a woman he did by her hair and through the water." is ... – Edwin Ashworth Sep 21 '17 at 14:38
  • 3
    very poor style if not downright ungrammatical. Your original is fine. – Edwin Ashworth Sep 21 '17 at 14:41
  • 1
    @EdwinAshworth Is this the post you were referring to? – Lawrence Sep 21 '17 at 14:48
  • 1
    @Lawrence It looks familiar. – Edwin Ashworth Sep 21 '17 at 14:51
  • Grammatical correctness, being able to be figured out, and good writing different issues are. Sentences should not be puzzles where a solution is theoretically possible. "You can figure out what I meant" is not a defense to a charge of bad writing. Whether a modifier is dangling is a matter of grammar, not clarity. – Acccumulation Sep 21 '17 at 14:57
  • Thanks for the help, everyone, and thanks for the link to the article especially. – SwabianOrtolan Sep 21 '17 at 15:13
  • I can't really see any scope for "misattribution" of clauses to the correct antecedent in OP's example. Unless we throw out one of those clauses: Richard watched a man he did not recognize drag a woman he did by her hair. In which case a perverse interpretation would be that he recognized the woman by her hair, not that he saw her being dragged by her hair. – FumbleFingers Sep 21 '17 at 15:55
  • @Acccumulation 'Grammatical correctness' is usage-driven and changes over time. Pullum comes very close to saying that 'It is I' is less acceptable than 'It's me' nowadays. If you're going to claim that all 'rules' from the 1950s still apply, you'll need to back up your claims with support from present-day grammarians of Pullum's stature. – Edwin Ashworth Sep 21 '17 at 21:40
  • Possible duplicate of "Dangling Participles" – Edwin Ashworth Sep 21 '17 at 21:41
  • Whether the modifier is dangling or not, it sounds like novel-speak not real language. – developerwjk Sep 21 '17 at 22:41

1 Answers1

0

"From the edge of the rice paddy, Richard watched a man drag a woman by her hair through the water. He recognized the woman, but not the man."

Acccumulation
  • 4,945