SAT® · Reading and Writing: Form, Structure, and Sense — Modifiers, Genitives, and Plurals
Squinting Modifiers
A squinting modifier sits between two verbs and could describe either one, so the sentence reads two opposite ways at once. You fix it by moving the modifier next to the verb it actually belongs with.
Look at 'Students who practise often score higher than their classmates.' Does 'often' describe the practising or the scoring? Both readings work grammatically, and they mean different things: one says the practising happens a lot, the other says the higher score happens a lot. That double reading is the whole problem. The modifier is physically stranded between two verbs, practise and score, and it can reach backward to one or forward to the other with equal ease. Nothing in the sentence tells you which way it leans, so the reader has to guess.
The fix is never to cut the wandering word. Deleting 'often' gives you 'Students who practise score higher than their classmates,' which is grammatical but has lost the information about frequency entirely. The sentence needs that word; it just needs it placed where only one verb can claim it. Move it next to the verb it's meant to modify: 'Students who often practise score higher than their classmates' locks 'often' onto practise, since it now sits directly before that verb and nowhere near the other one. The same logic explains why sliding a modifying phrase all the way to the front of the sentence also works: 'On Monday the tutor told the students to hand in their work' puts the phrase before both verbs, so only the first one, told, is positioned to take it.
This sits alongside other modifier questions on the test, like dangling and misplaced modifiers, because they all test the same instinct: a modifier attaches to whatever sits closest to it, so position is meaning. Squinting modifiers are the special case where two candidates are equally close, and the repair is always relocation, not deletion.
Key terms
- Squinting modifier
- A modifier positioned between two verbs or clauses so it could sensibly attach to either one.
- Modifier
- A word or phrase that describes, limits, or adds detail to another part of the sentence.
- Fronting
- Moving a phrase to the very start of a sentence so it sits before every verb it might otherwise ambiguously modify.
- Misplaced modifier
- A modifier set too far from the word it describes, causing it to attach to the wrong noun or verb.
Watch it explained
- How it worksHow does a modifier caught between two verbs look both ways and attach cleanly to neither?
- Common mistakeWhy doesn't deleting the ambiguous word count as a repair for a squinting modifier?
- Going furtherWhat changes when you shift the squinting word to the very front of the sentence instead?
Check yourself
End of topic.