Much Ado About Nothing

Philip B. Corbett, the style manual editor for the New York Times,  blogged about some of what he calls the “grammatical lapses” of the recent NYT publications.

The author spent special care analyzing the dangling modifiers, phrases in which the subject of the modifier is not present immediately afterwards, leaving the modifier dangling.

One of the examples provided by Mr. Corbett:

 “While browsing through real estate agencies in New York City, a little déjà vu can be unavoidable”

Being a hardcore descriptivist, I see nothing wrong with dangling modifiers as long as the unintended meaning created by the modifier does not realistically contend with the author’s intended meaning. 

Lets’ use another of the examples given in the Times blog:

“Married to Nicole Rowe, they have three children, all conceived and born during his sentence.”

The author means to say that some man is married to Nicole Rowe. The dangling modifier makes the sentence mean that a certain “they” are married to Rowe. 

Here the unintended does not compete with the intended because it is reasonable enough to suppose that readers will have the ability to discern the correct from the incorrect. That’s the beauty of the human brain, we don’t process data like computers.