I Shot an Elephant in my Pajamas
Misplaced modifiers are common sight these days with the advent of blogs. Well, maybe it didn’t shoot up since the blog era, but it is out in the open for everybody to read and judge.
A nice write-up by Grammar Girl on misplaced modifiers is something that smacks most of us right in the face. Here’s an excerpt:
Today guest-writer Bonnie Trenga is going to help us take a break from serious grammar and instead delve into the world of comedy—some intentional, some not. Groucho Marx said it best: “One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I’ll never know”. I’m sure you thought that was funny, but did you ever consider why it’s hilarious?
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Groucho’s joke is funny for the same reason that this real classified ad, laughed at in the book Sin and Syntax, is: “FOR SALE: Mahogany table by a lady with Chippendale legs” . Both sentences contain a misplaced prepositional phrase. Groucho intentionally put the phrase “in my pajamas” next to the word “elephant” to create the funny image of an elephant wearing PJs. Of course, the man, not the pachyderm, was wearing PJs. In the classified ad, the table, not the lady, has Chippendale legs. The writer carelessly put the prepositional phrase “with Chippendale legs” in the wrong place. Oops!
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…also quotes a student who once wrote this: “Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg address while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope”. This amusing sentence suggests that Lincoln traveled on the back of an envelope instead of wrote on the back of an envelope.
Also worth a few chuckles is this headline, quoted in Barbara Walraff’s book Word Court: “Two Sisters Reunited After 18 Years in Checkout Counter”. So these ladies spent 18 years at checkout? Hmm.
Lastly, we have this incorrect sentence, found in the latest novel by a New York Times best-selling author: “We found the address he gave me without difficulty”. I’m glad it wasn’t difficult to give out the address. Here, the prepositional phrase “without difficulty” has been misplaced. It’s next to “gave me” instead of “found.”
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Solution to the Problem
It’s easy to fix overly long sentences: just make them shorter! In all seriousness, though, if you are writing a sentence and are having trouble fitting together all the components, consider making your enormous sentence two more manageable sentences.
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