ShmoopTube

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Thank you We sneak in misplaced modifiers Allah shmoop you're

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driving down a narrow road in the middle of the

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night Suddenly a suicidal deer jumps in front of your

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car There are two ways to break the news to

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your insurance agent You could say a deer just hit

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my car windshield Or a deer hit just my car

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windshield Well welcome to the wonderful world of modifiers If

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you couldn't guess a modifier is a word or phrase

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that modify another word or phrase Yeah sometimes if you're

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not careful you can misplace a modifier A misplaced modifier

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is a modifier that modifies the wrong thing A modifier

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khun b a single word like only just or almost

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let's Look at a couple of examples you could say

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mike ate only venison or mike only ate venison In

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these examples the word on ly modifies the word behind

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it giving these senses completely different meanings if you say

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like a lonely venison what you mean is that mike

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ate nothing but dead dear If you say mike on

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ly ate venison However what you mean is that the

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only thing mike did with the deer meat was eating

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He didn't cook it and he didn't buy it from

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his local grocer You could also use a short phrase

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at the beginning of a sentence as a modifier Here's

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the formula short modifying phrase plus comma Plus the rest

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of the sentence gets you there Just remember whatever the

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modifying phrase were first who should immediately follow the comma

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Here are some examples While you could say freshly cooked

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lisa left the venison said cool down what you really

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mean is freshly cooked the venison was left bite elisa

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to cool them well you might be tempted to say

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covered in flies the highway crew pulled the deer carcass

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off the road What you really mean is covered in

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flies The deer carcass was pulled off the road by

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the highway crew When it comes to modifiers the smartest

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thing you could do is pay attention to what you're

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writing You don't want to misplace a modifier any more

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than you want to misplace any leftover bam really bambi 00:02:26.47 --> [endTime] is that nice

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