The second type of common correction that I frequently need to make in all the texts I edit, even scholarly manuscripts, are dangling and misplaced modifiers. Problem modifiers can be embarrassing mistakes, as they can change the meaning of sentences drastically, sometimes comically.

A dangling modifier is a phrase or clause that can’t logically modify the subject of a sentence. This problem crops up particularly when authors are discussing the scope of their books or chapters. Often an expletive construction (it is, there is) begins the main clause; to fix this problem, writers should place the true subject immediately after the modifier:

• Dangling: To understand the impact of this law, it is important to review the history of women’s education. [It can’t understand.]

• To understand the impact of this law, we must first review the history of women’s education. [We can understand.]

Sometimes it’s possible to change either the main clause or the modifier to allow the sentence to make sense:

• Dangling: Before turning to Chapter 3, there are three terms to clarify ...

• Before we turn to Chapter 3, there are three terms it is important to clarify …

• Before turning to Chapter 3, we should clarify three terms …

Even without expletive constructions, dangling modifiers can make their way into sentences that describe the author’s intentions for the book as a whole:

• Dangling: Unlike other studies on this subject, you will not find us seeking to place blame for the current situation. [Unlike other studies modifies you in this sentence, which doesn’t make sense. We might expect the reader to be like or unlike other people; we wouldn’t expect them to be like or unlike other studies.]

• Unlike other studies on this subject, this book will not place blame for the current situation. [Unlike other studies clearly modifies this book.]

A misplaced modifier is one that is placed within the sentence in such a way that it is ambiguous (“squinting”) or that it modifies the wrong word. Misplaced modifiers can sound silly or actually skew the author’s intended meaning. Here’s an example of a silly-sounding modifier:

• Misplaced: Cats reward humans with dead mice. [When with dead mice appears after humans, it sounds as if the humans already possess dead mice, and for that reason the cats decide to reward them.]

Rewording the phrasing works best here:

• To reward their human owners, cats give them dead mice.

Here’s a misplaced modifier that is not silly but that alters the author’s intended meaning:

• Misplaced: The athlete almost sprinted one hundred yards before spraining his ankle. [The athlete ran at a pace just under that of a sprint.]

• The athlete sprinted almost one hundred yards before spraining his ankle. [The athlete sprinted, but the distance he ran was not quite one hundred yards.]

Here’s another misplaced adverb:

• Misplaced: From the time their children are born, parents play crucial roles in how successful their children will be cross-culturally. [The children will achieve success across several cultures.]

• From the time their children are born, parents cross-culturally play crucial roles in their how successful their children will be as adults. [Parents across several cultures all play important roles in their children’s success.]

A squinting modifier is placed so that readers are uncertain which word it is supposed to modify. The reader may not arrive at a wrong interpretation so much as be uncertain about which meaning the writer intended.

• Squinting: Writers who proofread often improve the quality of their work. [Do the writers often proofread and in that way improve their work? Do writers who proofread improve their work often? Which is happening often: the proofreading or the improving?]

Moving the adverb closer to the idea it’s meant to modify solves this problem:

• Writers who often proofread improve the quality of their work.

• Writers who proofread improve the quality of their work often.

Imagine these kinds of modifier problems in passages of text describing research methodology: if a whole argument is based on the soundness of the methods used, the author will want to be sure that modifiers aren’t introducing ambiguity or outright mistakes into descriptions of the process. Beyond methodology, scholarly writers base discussions on fine distinctions of meaning and interpretation. It’s the copy editor’s job to make sure that modifier problems don’t muddy those distinctions.

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The first of the “top five” problems I see in all the texts I edit is unclear pronoun reference. Scholars certainly avoid basic “me and him went to the store” errors. But even a scholarly writer can lose track of antecedents, with confusing results.

The noun that immediately precedes a pronoun is generally the antecedent (what the pronoun is meant to represent). When other nouns appear between the pronoun and the antecedent, the writer can accidentally sound silly:

• In 1986 Jones wrote an extensive essay on Darwin and his father, but he left it on the boat.
  

Strictly speaking, he refers back to Darwin’s father, who certainly is not the person who lost the essay. Readers may understand the author’s intended meaning, but that accidental meaning lingers behind, serving as a distraction or weakening the reader’s trust in the author’s abilities.

Another kind of pronoun problem I often see in scholarly texts is the use of a possessive rather than a noun for an antecedent. A pronoun needs a noun, not a word or phrase that describes the noun, as its antecedent:

• In Darwin’s treatise, he presented ideas that challenged traditional religion.
  

Darwin’s acts as an adjective here. The only noun before he is treatise. This kind of sentence is easy to recast:

• In his treatise, Darwin presented ideas that challenged traditional religion.
  

Sometimes a pronoun could refer to two different nouns equally well:

• The rest of this poem is an extended metaphor for the life cycle. It begins with sprouting, then blooming, and eventually releasing seeds.
  

Here, the noun immediately before it is life cycle, but the reader may wonder if the author really intended it to refer to extended metaphor. The phrase “sprouting, then blooming, and eventually releasing seeds” could logically describe either life cycle or the particular metaphor under discussion. The content gives no hints to the reader about the author’s intentions. (Compare this sentence with the first example, in which the phrase in 1986 makes Darwin’s father an unacceptable antecedent for “he.”) Especially if this discussion of the metaphor is meant to introduce a long or complicated analysis, even one pronoun problem can seriously undercut what the writer is trying to say for paragraphs to come.

Pronoun reference is especially problematic when a pronoun like it is used syntactically in two different ways:

• Mrs. Smith has refused to return my phone calls, despite the intervention of one of her colleagues. This occurred two weeks ago. Her reluctance to discuss the billing problem may represent school policy. Surely the committee will agree that only if we address it and how it affects the budget will it be possible to make it better.
  

What is the it that needs to be discussed in the final sentence? The school policy? The billing problem? Does the final it (what could be made better) refer to the same noun as the first it? In terms of syntax, these its are meant to substitute for specific nouns acting as subjects (it affects) or objects (make it better, of it). But the it in will it be possible is a different kind of syntactical structure: an expletive, or a kind of “place holder” in a clause. The true subject or object of the clause appears later in these kinds of sentences; we see this use of it in sentences like “It will take six weeks to fix this problem” (for “Fixing this problem will take six weeks”) or “Make it more obvious what your purpose is” (for “Make your purpose more obvious”). Expletives are acceptable in scholarly prose, but when it has already appeared in reference to specific nouns, an expletive can make a passage confusing. Even if the reader takes only a moment to figure out the syntax, for that moment he or she is not paying attention to the ideas of the writer. Even a momentary lapse in attention can hurt the persuasiveness of the text’s overall argument.

For this paragraph, repeating nouns rather than using pronouns makes the content more clear:

• Mrs. Smith has refused to return my phone calls, despite the intervention of one of her colleagues. This intervention occurred two weeks ago. Smith’s reluctance to discuss the billing problem may represent school policy. Surely the committee will agree that only if we address the billing error and how it affects the budget will we be able to make the official policy better.
  

Note that other pronoun problems needed to be addressed also. This happened six weeks ago could have referred to the billing problem or the intervention of the colleague. Her syntactically referred to colleague rather than Smith, so repeating Smith’s name makes sure the reader understands the author’s intended meaning.

It’s easy to lose track of pronouns when writing the kind of sophisticated analyses that appear in scholarly texts. Often scholars are so immersed in building an argument that they don’t pick up on ambiguities in the prose. Editors and proofreaders have the training—and the objectivity—to catch these kinds of errors. The resulting improvement in clarity helps readers follow the scholar’s train of thought.

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When I started copyediting scholarly books several years ago, I was astonished by the kinds of corrections I needed to make most frequently. For very different reasons, the scholarly authors whose work I was editing made the same kinds of errors my freshmen students had made during the eight years I taught composition.

Students make these errors either because they haven't mastered writing skills yet or because they don't put time into revising their work. The scholars make these errors because they're writing longer, more complicated sentences and, I'm assuming, having insights during the writing process itself. If a scholar realizes another brilliant point that can be made halfway through a sentence, the syntax sometimes can't keep up with the brain, and errors find their way into the text.

What are these five most common mistakes? They'll sound familiar to you:

1. Problems with pronoun reference
2. Dangling or misplaced modifiers
3. Problems with parallel structure
4. Wordiness
5. Problems distinguishing between (and therefore punctuating) restrictive and nonrestrictive elements

Only this last problem is difficult for many people, even seasoned writers, to grasp. To give each of these problems the attention they deserve, I'll be writing about them one by one in upcoming posts.

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I don’t remember if it was in my freshman or my sophomore year of college, but I do remember how emphatically Dr. Mahaffey forbade his students from writing more than one modifying element between the subject and main verb of a sentence: “Don’t do that.”

At the time, I assumed he was laying down an ironclad rule. From that point on, I followed his advice and allowed only one such modifier, if any, to follow the subject.

• OK: “Hawthorne, who was born in Salem, distanced himself from his ancestor’s role in the witch trials, an event in American history in which innocent people were executed.”

• Not OK: “Hawthorne, who was born in Salem, tracing his ancestors back to one of the judges of the witch trials, in which innocent people were executed, distanced himself from his family’s role in this part of American history.”

Since my college days, I’ve learned that no rule forbids long strings of what are called nonrestrictive elements to come between subject and predicate. In fact, in my editing work I often see multiple phrases and clauses used this way. But I still think it’s a really bad idea.

Why? Clarity.

By the time your readers have read two, three, or more modifying elements and finally arrived at the main verb, they may need to retrace their steps to remember the subject of the sentence:

Popular in New Hampshire, Pierce, who was nominated in 1852 as the Democrat candidate for the presidency, largely in response to his support of the Compromise of 1850, which made federal laws stricter in regard to runaway slaves, adding to the strife between North and South during the years when the nation was heading toward the Civil War, was responsible for the disastrous inclusion of several factions of the Democratic Party in the cabinet.

If readers are forced to retrace their steps to remember the subject of your sentence, they have left the flow of your thoughts, which you’ve otherwise carefully arranged to lead up to your conclusions. If sentence after sentence contains multiple “interrupters,” you’re seriously slowing down your readers’ progress through your text. This is especially true if your subject matter is theoretical or abstract.

Here’s the sentence recast:

Popularity at home in New Hampshire was no guarantee of success in the Oval Office. Nominated as the Democratic candidate in 1852, Pierce was controversial not only for his support of the Compromise of 1850 and its stricter federal laws regarding runaway slaves but also for his disastrous inclusion of several factions of the Democratic Party in his cabinet, a decision causing even more political strife as the nation was heading toward the Civil War.

I’ve moved the interrupting modifiers to positions before the subject and after the main verb. Yes, I’ve also split the original sentence in two.

Look what breaking up the sentence has forced me to do: to develop the seed of an idea. In the earlier version, I simply state that Pierce was popular in New Hampshire. (So what?) In the second version, I comment on how that popularity failed to serve Pierce in office, and trouble succeeding politically is the main point here. Even more important, the core idea of the longer sentence is now more emphatic: Pierce was controversial. Everything that comes before and after the subject-verb pair builds upon that clearly expressed idea.

If you decide to practice recasting strings of interrupting modifiers in your own sentences, note that you can often simply move modifiers to the beginning or end of the sentence, as in my recast version.

Scholarly writing deals with complicated and often abstract concepts. Why make absorbing your ideas even more complicated for your readers? Rather than forcing them to retrace their steps, keep them following your line of thought.