I wrote a note on a student’s text about “amount” and “number", and I was going to write it up as a daily post, but then I wondered if I already had written about the topic—and I did, back in 2021.

#English #Amount #Number #CountNouns #NonCountNouns #Grammar #Prescriptivism #Descriptivism #Language #Linguistics

https://andrewjshields.blogspot.com/2021/05/amount-number-and-count-and-non-count.html

The trouble with dangling modifiers

On many vexed matters of English usage, people can be divided into the following groups:

1. those who neither know nor care
2. those who do not know, but care very much
3. those who know and condemn
4. those who know and approve
5. those who know and distinguish.

Thus with wry wit did H. W. Fowler address the existence of split infinitives in his landmark usage dictionary of 1926. He concluded that the first group ‘are the vast majority, and are a happy folk, to be envied by most of the minority classes’.

Dangling catkins in the rural west of Ireland

Even more people are happily unaware of dangling or misplaced modifiers. I mean this kind of thing: Cycling downhill, a truck almost hit me. The writer was cycling, but the grammar implies, absurdly, that the truck was. Or: Born in India, Diya’s education took her to Europe. Diya was born in India, but the line says her education was.

As a copy-editor I’m in category 5: I routinely edit danglers to accord with the norms of formal written English. But they’re not always a flagrant error, and they’ve occurred in English since at least Chaucer’s day.

Let’s take a closer look.

(A note on terminology: The modifier is typically a participle but may be a clause, an infinitive, a gerund, etc. It may be described as dangling, hanging, confused, misplaced, misattached, unattached, unrelated, misrelated, etc. – though, depending on the source, ‘dangling’ and ‘hanging’ may apply only when the intended subject is implied, not just unattached. As a general shorthand, there’s ‘danglers’.)

Many danglers cause little or no harm and are ambiguous only with a feat of imagination. For example:

While replying to your email, the doorbell rang.

The dangling gerund suggests that the doorbell was replying to the email, but it’s commonsensical to infer that the writer was doing so. The questionable grammar is likely to go unnoticed and unremarked upon in informal contexts but might be fixed if the prose were edited:

While I was replying to your email, the doorbell rang.

Sometimes what’s attached to the dangler is not a noun but a dummy ‘it’ or ‘there’:

Looking over the results, there seems to be a consensus.

Who was looking over the results is unclear from the isolated sentence, but it’s probably obvious in context. Dangling participles like this draw the attention of readers sensitized to the problem, such as editors, sticklers, and grammatically versed readers, but go unnoticed by the majority.

To open the lid, it must be pushed down, then turned counter-clockwise.

This dangling infinitive could be phrased more grammatically (To be opened, the lid must…; To open the lid, you must push it down…), but there’s no real confusion or difficulty. As G. H. Vallins writes of the general structure in The Pattern of English (1956), ‘provided the result is not patently incongruous, it is not too lightly to be condemned’.

Some will condemn it anyway, in all possible cases, but there are fewer absolutes in English usage than is commonly supposed. Much hinges on style and context, and what is idiomatic need not be straitjacketed.

Contemporary prescriptive authorities also allow wiggle room. Garner’s Modern English Usage quotes danglers from the prose of canonical authors and reputable grammarians, and says some ‘are acceptable because of long-standing usage’, e.g., Considering the current atmosphere in the legislature, the bill probably won’t pass.

To considering can be added concerning, assuming, allowing for, speaking of, owing to, and many such phrases that have acquired ‘a prepositional or adverbial force’, Vallins writes. These, he continues,

may introduce a phrase that is syntactically independent of a noun or pronoun in the main sentence . . . . It follows that there are borderline cases; and since this is so, there would seem to be some justification for any loosely related participle whose phrase is more adverbial than adjectival in function.

Now, about those pitfalls. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage says that unconscious humour is ‘the one pitfall that must be avoided’ – like the truck on a bicycle, in my invented example. The Columbia Guide to Standard American English concurs: ‘It’s the funny ones that cause trouble.’

We might profitably take that to mean funny ha-ha or funny peculiar. Some cases may not be amusing but are surreal, nonsensical, or otherwise jarring. And to these may be added juxtapositions that are genuinely confusing or ambiguous: though rare, they do occur.

I’ll present a couple of examples I saw recently. The funny or surreal type appeared in a Quiz of the Week in the Irish Times of 12 April 2025:

Some 12,000 years after it became extinct, a Dallas-based biotech company claimed this week they have resurrected what as the “world’s first successfully de-extincted species”?
(a) Velociraptors.
(b) Dire wolves.
(c) Woolly mammoths.
(d) Travel agents.

Photo of the print copy:

To be clear, a Dallas-based biotech company did not, as far as we know, go extinct 12,000 years ago – but that’s what the line implies. This is the ‘unconscious humour’ that MWDEU warns against. Among the ways the line could be felicitously rephrased is to simply move the modifier to the end:*

A Dallas-based biotech company claimed this week they have resurrected what as the “world’s first successfully de-extincted species”, some 12,000 years after it became extinct?

As automatic as the misreading may be, no one is likely to seriously interpret the line that way, though they may pause for reanalysis when they find the sentence’s grammatical subject – a Dallas-based biotech company – to be wildly different from anything the modifier had primed them to expect.

Next is the confusing type. This one, from Pat Falvey and Pemba Gyalje Sherpa’s book The Summit: How Triumph Turned to Tragedy on K2’s Deadliest Days, starts with the word ‘Sacked’; I include a few lines before it for context:

Ever since he had climbed out of his tent at 2am, Jehan [Baig] had not been feeling well. His expedition leader, Hugues D’Aubarède, had asked him to bring some extra oxygen bottles to the top of the Bottleneck. He had just done so and now he wanted nothing more than to get back to his tent. Jehan’s visit to K2 had been a litany of misfortunes and mishaps.

Sacked by the Singaporean team for an alleged failure to comply with instructions and for poor climbing techniques, his friend and mentor, Shaheen Baig, had secured a place for him on Hugues’ team.

The syntax implies that the Singaporean team sacked Shaheen Baig, but in fact they sacked Jehan Baig. Luckily, the broader context shows this, and the information is conveyed unambiguously elsewhere in the book. But if the line were taken out of context, or read inattentively, it could easily lead one astray. The two names’ similarity deepens the difficulty.

Through this example you can see the potential for damage – to meaning, to reputation – when writers are unmindful of misplaced modifiers. Genuinely ambiguous cases are fortunately not common, because context usually clarifies things. And copy-editors reduce their numbers, which, paradoxically, may make the phenomenon more obscure than it otherwise would be.

As it is, innocuous danglers are common, especially in unedited writing. And they will inevitably jar on some readers. Benjamin Dreyer, in Dreyer’s English, deems them ‘the most common error committed in otherwise competent prose and by far the most egregious type of error that regularly makes it to print’.

Many danglers are like the one below, which I read this morning in a film review. I’ve altered the details while preserving the syntactic essence:

The plot follows Kim as she returns to her hometown after a period of travel. Looking for direction, her mentor advises she join a local organization designed to meet young people’s needs.

Grammatically it implies the wrong subject – Kim’s mentor is not looking for direction. (Or, if she is, it’s irrelevant and not what the line means to say.) Context makes the risk of ambiguity negligible, but the line may incur a brief miscue or distraction in readers as they rearrange the elements for sense.

Among the ways the line might be edited to avoid the misplaced modifier is to employ the much-maligned passive voice: Looking for direction, she is advised by her mentor to join a local organization . . . .

Dangling modifiers come in a range of types, some more conspicuous or problematic than others. In their defence, you can cite Shakespeare and Jane Austen – but even harmless danglers can interfere with a smooth reading experience, so they’re worth being on guard for. My earlier conclusion holds:

When the meaning is plain and no genuine ambiguity arises, you might get away with dangling a modifier. But it’s best to be aware of the potential pitfalls, and to recast the sentence if you judge it necessary.

*

* There’s a split infinitive for you, as a treat. I’m in group 4 for these.

Update:

Thanks to 3 Quarks Daily and The Browser for sharing this grammar nerdout with their readers.

#ambiguity #danglingModifiers #descriptivism #editing #EnglishUsage #grammar #language #misplacedModifiers #pragmatics #prescriptivism #reading #syntax #usage #writing #writingStyle

On the blog, a review of the linguistics book 'New Horizons in Prescriptivism Research' https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2025/04/24/book-review-new-horizons-in-prescriptivism-research-2024/

#books #BookReview #linguistics #sociolinguistics #research #language #prescriptivism #EnglishUsage

A thing about language that a lot of people don't know is that you can dislike a usage intensely – a pronunciation, a piece of grammar, etc. – without presuming to reject it on behalf of all people, in all places, for all time

#language #words #EnglishUsage #grammar #prescriptivism #LanguageChange

Annoying Words I've Seen Today
Actionable, deep dives, scaling back, impactful, attitudinal, rolling back, orgs.

Other Annoying Words/phrases
Game-changer, level up, ramp up, kick off, hack (when used about everyday life i.e. cooking hack) ,elevate (hackneyed), Circle back, combo, info, typo, y'all, deets, specs, app/apps (this may be the proper word for mobile applications), pics, photos, faves, legit, adorbs, etc. There are many, many more. This is just a small sample. This is also why I generally can't tolerate more than ten minutes reading modern articles or associating with people who speak and write in this manner. It gives me a headache, sometimes literally (and yes, I do use that word in its proper sense). I fully understand why those with manual dexterity issues, etc. would write shortened words and such. But for the rest of us, there is no excuse. Yes, there are normal abbreviations, but these go well beyond that into sheer laziness. As for the corporate and sports rubbish, when did that start? Why must everything be a game-changer? When did we begin living in a video game that we started levelling up? Have we all become scuba divers that we take deep dives into everything? How did combination turn into combo, when there is only one o in it? Why must everyone, including professionals, write words such as info and photos, to say nothing of the use of emoticons, emojis, etc. in so-called business letters? Speaking of which, when did it become appropriate to call people who are not your friends or family by their first names without their permission, instead of addressing them properly i.e. "hey, Georgiana" instead of "Dear Miss Brummell" or "Dear Madam"? Then, there are those who forget to follow at least one of the rules regarding numbers in a sentence. Either you begin using numerals after ten or, as I do, after 100. "I put 2 cups on the is not proper usage. If I wrote all of my thoughts about such things, I would rival Captain Jesse in rambling and length, but suffice it to say that I am utterly disgusted by all of this modern nonsense, and even more so by bad English in general (good/well, lay/lie, me/I, double negatives, singular they, etc.) being accepted and even promoted by educators, both of native English students and of English learners!

#abbreviations #cCorporateSpeak #English #grammar #language #linguistics #netspeak #prescriptivism #textspeak #words #writing

The Strunk cost fallacy:
https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2025/01/22/the-strunk-cost-fallacy/

#language #books #EnglishUsage #writing #WritingCommunity #blog #neologisms #grammar #prescriptivism

The Strunk cost fallacy

Myths have serious sticking power. This is true not just of the myths of antiquity but also of more modern and niche types, like the myths of English usage. It seems that nothing will ever stop people peeving pointlessly about split infinitives, double negatives, passive voice, singular they, &c.

One thing that makes usage myths sticky, and spready, is that when we’ve gone to the trouble of learning something, we’re often reluctant to unlearn it, even in the face of contradictory truth – especially when that knowledge gives us a pleasurable feeling of authority or expertise. Renouncing it means accepting that we’ve wasted our time, so instead we double down.

This makes it a form of sunk cost fallacy or sunk cost effect. The term is from economics but has spread to more general use. I’m about to spread it further, with a goofy twist: Doubling down on a bogus rule of language use because you’ve invested time or cognitive effort into learning it is hereby known as the Strunk cost fallacy (or Strunk cost effect).

Regrettably, there is no way to include E. B. White in the coinage without spoiling the pun, but both he and William Strunk Jr. bear some responsibility for promulgating a range of egregious misunderstandings about English grammar, usage, and ‘correctness’.

The dogmatic tone in those authors’ influential Elements of Style also fuels, among some of its devotees, intolerance of non-standardized dialects and informal varieties of English, because readers gain (or strengthen) the impression that in language use there can be only one right way. This is another fallacy, an insidious and socially toxic one.

If you find evidence that you have a mistaken belief about language use – it happens to us all – then my advice is to heed that evidence. Instead of allowing your defences to reject the possibility that you’ve wasted your time learning and maybe promoting a falsity, embrace the opportunity to revise your beliefs. Don’t fall for the Strunk cost fallacy.

In closing, here’s a related piece of snark:

Accidentally typed “Strunk and Why” and this sums up my feelings better than any tired rant I might muster

— Stan Carey (@stancarey.bsky.social) Oct 16, 2024 at 20:33

(I tried embedding an equivalent Mastodon post, but it didn’t work the way Bluesky’s did. I’m using both platforms for now.)

* * *

A few other coinages you might like: Whom’s Law of Hypercorrection; Indo-European Jones; scary quotes; the apostrophantom; the Typographic Oath for editors.

#books #EBWhite #grammar #humour #language #neologisms #peevology #phrases #prescriptivism #TheElementsOfStyle #usage #WilliamStrunkJr

Eldraeic Modifier of the Day: boz

https://eldraeverse.com/2024/09/01/eldraeic-modifier-of-the-day-boz/

#ConclaveOfLinguisticsAndOntology #eldraeicLanguage #eldraeverse #ImperialInfoclast #language #prescriptivism #snippet #vernacular #writing