Danglers

As I read through the comments on and correction of various articles, I could only feel pity for the people that actually comb through those articles so finely to find such minuscule errors. I mean I guess if it's their thing it's cool that they get paid to do it. But really, thinking of all the time they must spend with grammar and mechanical rules makes me want to cry a little. The part that depresses me most is that most people will never notice the errors they point out, nor be bothered to read this section of the NYTimes to enlighten themselves.

I don't even know what a modifier is.

I feel like these kinds of things are just useless. I can still be a very literate human being and successful writer without knowing what a modifier is, much less how to keep it from dangling. But such is life that sometimes we must learn things that do not interest us, and so I begin my investigation of the dangling modifier.

So basically, if a modifier is not directly followed by something that is being described, the modifier is dangling. Apparently dangling modifiers make it seem that some participles are not referring to what they seem to be referring to. I don't really know. I don't even know what a participle is. I understand the authors point in some ways, because in some sentences it is obvious that revision is needed. But why do they have to name it?

Oh, these helped.

Black Things

The narrator begins Sula with the words: "In that place, where they tore up the nightshade and blackberry patches from their roots to make room for the Medallion City Golf Course, there was once a neighborhood" (3). This one sentence sets the tone for the story and gives us an idea of the narrator's point of view. By using the phrase "tore up," we know that the narrator is partial to the nightshade and blackberry patches (3). He or she believes that they were forcefully and probably unfairly removed from their home. Also, the "nightshade" and "blackberry patches" appear to be metaphors for a black community because of their dark flowers and fruit (3). By these rhetorical devices, the reader can infer that the narrator is from the neighborhood that was uprooted by the building of the golf course, and is most likely black. This gives us the idea that the rest of the novel will relate to this scenario and we are expectant of what is to come from the very first sentence.

Nightshade

Blackberries