Amanda A. answered • 04/01/14
Tutor
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Experienced Teacher and Education Professional w/ Test-Prep Experience
"Modifiers" are parts of a sentence that describe a noun or verb, but when they're misplaced, it's not clear what they're supposed to modify.
Here's an example that may help.
Here's an example that may help.
The kid was painting a bird wearing sunglasses.
In this sentence, there are two nouns ("The kid" is the subject - the noun doing the action - and "a bird" is the object - the noun receiving the action or being acted upon). There is one modifier ("wearing sunglasses"). Now, there's nothing grammatically WRONG with this sentence, but I'm guessing that the bird probably wasn't wearing sunglasses - I think the modifier was misplaced!
Luckily, fixing misplaced modifiers is super simple. All we have to do is rearrange the sentence to put the modifier next to the noun it's supposed to be modifying!
The kid wearing sunglasses was painting a bird.
It's all about identifying the modifier (hint: it gives you details about one of the nouns) and making sure it's next to the noun it's supposed to modify!
I hope that helps, Kiara!
I hope that helps, Kiara!
