Placement of modifiers (13)

Careless placement of modifiers is a frequent cause of unclear (and annoying) writing. Don’t make your readers rely on interpretation or guesswork.

Example of the careless placement of a modifier

An article in an online newsletter includes this sentence:

“Perhaps attempting to persuade its powerful neighbor to the North to do the same, last month, major revisions to Mexico’s immigration laws came into effect.”

The reader thinks:

“The phrase ‘Perhaps attempting to persuade its powerful neighbor to the North to do the same’ appears to modify the nearby noun revisions. But that wouldn’t be logical; revisions don’t attempt to do anything. So maybe it modifies Mexico’s. But wait, that’s a possessive. So, maybe the phrase modifies the verb came. But how could that be logical?”

Then the reader – if he is patient with careless writers – may think:

“I’ll mentally recast the sentence according to this writer’s most likely meaning: ‘Mexico made major revisions to its immigration laws, which came into effect last month. In making these revisions, Mexico may have been attempting to persuade its powerful neighbor to the North to do likewise.’ ”

The Takeaway: Place every modifier carefully. When a modifier is a phrase, construct the phrase carefully. If you make your readers work harder to read a sentence than you worked to write it, they may resent you for it. If you are lucky, they may only laugh at you.

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