Dangling Modifiers: An Explanation and Guide for Editing

Aug 1

You don’t want danglers in your writing!

What do editors mean when they talk about danglers? This is a term for dangling modifiers, or words/phrases that are not properly connected to the subject they’re supposed to be describing. Danglers are considered grammatically incorrect and make your writing sound confusing, unclear, and misleading. AI grammar checkers often miss this type of mistake because the error comes from the meaning of the sentence rather than the construction.

Let’s look at some examples and then talk about how to correct them.

Grabbing her coat, the door shut with a bang behind her.

The door grabbed her coat?

Note: You can spot the dangling modifier because it contains a participle without a subject (grabbing her coat). However, the modifier does not logically connect with the main subject of the sentence, which is the door. The action of grabbing the coat is meant to modify what she is doing, so she needs to be the main subject of the sentence.

Having pulled the turkey out of the oven, the dinner was ready to begin.

The dinner pulled the turkey out of the oven?

At age eight, my family moved to Austin.

The whole family was eight years old?

There are three main ways to tackle danglers: Change the main subject of the sentence, change the modifier into a dependent or independent clause with its own subject, or combine the ideas so they create one cohesive sentence. You’ll need to play around with these options to find the correction that stays true to the original meaning and voice.

Change the subject:

Grabbing her coat, she left and shut the door with a bang behind her.

Instead of editing the first part of the sentence, we just change the subject from “the door” to “she.” Adding “she left” helps with the logic. This works pretty well, but it does change the feeling of the sentence to specify that she is shutting the door.

Having pulled the turkey out of the oven, I was ready to start the dinner.

This is good, but this rewrite gives the speaker more agency than they had in the original sentence. It may not be appropriate for the context.

At age eight, I moved to Austin with my family.

This works very well! It’s clear and easy to understand.

Change the modifier:

She grabbed her coat, and the door shut with a bang behind her.

We edited the first part of the sentence by giving it a subject, and then we connected the two clauses with “and.” This feels very true to the original sentence. It could even be split into two sentences.

I pulled the turkey out of the oven; the dinner was ready to begin.

This works well and keeps the feeling of the original sentence.

When I was eight, my family moved to Austin.

This is a good option for fixing the sentence. It puts the focus on the family rather than the speaker.

Combine the two clauses:

She grabbed her coat and shut the door with a bang behind her.

We edited the sentence so that “she” does all the actions described in the scene. This is a great way to fix this sentence, but it does change the feeling of the sentence to specify that she is shutting the door.

I pulled the turkey out of the oven and called everyone to the table for dinner.

This changes the sentence quite a bit, but it adds great detail that helps the reader visualize the scene.

I moved to Austin with my family at age eight.

This is a great way to fix this sentence!

There are endless ways to correct dangling modifiers, but this gives you a launching point to identify the best rewrite for your story.

But wait! Keep in mind that danglers have made their way into some of the most widely read works of great literature. Virginia Woolf wrote “Lying awake, the floor creaked” in Mrs Dalloway. If you were Virginia Woolf’s copyeditor, would you have changed that sentence to “She was lying awake when the floor creaked”? In Richard II, Shakespeare penned:

As in a theatre, the eyes of men,

After a well-graced actor leaves the stage,

Are idly bent on him that enters next,

Thinking his prattle to be tedious.

The eyes, that’s the subject of the sentence. But eyes don’t think his prattle to be tedious—men do!

My advice, when it comes to fiction, is to always put the reading experience first. Danglers are known to obfuscate the meaning of a sentence and should therefore be avoided when a rewrite would improve clarity without sacrificing voice.

Now that you’ve learned how to edit danglers without losing the meaning and feeling of the original sentence, you have a new skill for your self-editing toolkit.