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Write Guru| Grammar | Mississippi |
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Suggest improvements for the highlighted problem area: The Mississippi River carries more silt than any other river does. Standing on the delta, the river slowly deposits some of this silt in the salty marshes. Thirty tons of silt arrive each second. When thoroughly laden, you can see the river choke the marshes with mud. As the muddy delta grows, the river seeks a new path to the Gulf of Mexico often. The Mississippi has had seven deltas during the past five thousand years. The delta, therefore, is a collection basin for silt that is always changing. Answer: - The Dangling Modifier - Another example of a dangling modifier is an elliptical clause in our opening paragraph:
Here the thing being modified is in the sentence (the river), but the modifier has an ellipsis (the omission of a phrase that is implied by the context). In this example the thing implied, but omitted, is the river. One way to make things clear to the reader is to write out the entire modifying phrase:
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