What’s the difference between dangling and misplaced modifiers?
A dangling modifier is a modifier that does not have a subject within the sentence. In contrast, a misplaced modifier does have a subject, but the modifier and the subject being modified are separated.
The following sentence has a dangling modifier:
“Eager to leave the room, the presentation ended early.”
In this sentence, there is no subject indicating who was eager to leave the room.
In contrast, this sentence has a misplaced modifier:
“The frazzled woman’s hair was difficult to comb.”
The placement of the modifier “frazzled” makes it unclear if it is the woman who was frazzled or her hair.
A clearer structure would be the following:
“The woman’s frazzled hair was difficult to comb.”