Don’t leave me hanging! The good oil on “dangling modifiers”

4 March, 2026

The editing process is full steam ahead and in the last sweep through, the proofreader picked up a ‘dangling modifier’. Do you know what that is? One for the grammar tragics to look up.

Unfortunately, the real example appears at a bit of a spoiler moment 🤐, but here’s another example:

Walking into the kitchen, the smoke alarm started screaming.

The problem is that the sentence accidentally suggests the smoke alarm walked into the kitchen. The person doing the walking isn’t included, leaving the opening phrase “dangling” with nothing sensible to attach to.

The sentence should have been phrased something like:

When I walked into the kitchen, the smoke alarm started screaming.

It’s a tiny grammatical slip, but once you get a sniff of those pesky dangling modifiers, they’re a bit irritating - which explains why editors seem to have a sixth sense for spotting them.

Of course, a smoke detector screaming is personification, but that’s enough grammar for one day!