By deleting the first name and designation of the Somali Premier, readers were left confused by the news item “NOTHING TO WORRY, SAYS PREMIER“.
This appeared in a newspaper and it’s a mess. I very strongly suggest that you don’t waste time and energy hauling word bricks to build something like this.
Let’s take the errors one by one.
[1] The first part in red is the modifier (meaning it adds to the information given in the second part after the comma). But it doesn’t say who is doing the deleting. So we have no choice but to think it is the readers. Come on, the modifier is placed nearest the word “reader”, right?
If the reader is the one doing the deleting job, why is he confused? Ok, don’t glare at me. If the reader is not the deleter, then who is? Bad, bad.
You need three things to fix the first part – [1] the answer for ‘who’, [2] a proper verb (‘deleting’ lost its rank as a verb) and [3] a connecting word. Together these will put sense into the dangling modifier and get it on firm ground.
My choice of the three: who deleted? – the newspaper, verb – deleted, connecting word – when
Now put it together: When the newspaper deleted the first name and designation of the Somali Premier, readers were left confused by the news item “NOTHING TO WORRY (?), SAYS PREMIER“.
[2] And “Nothing to worry”? But there is . It is the deletion of the word “about”. Make that “NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT, SAYS PREMIER. Surely newspapers can afford that extra ink for the word!
Quiz: fix these sentences.
[1] By removing the billboards on Airport Road, the aircraft were able to take off and land in safer conditions.
[2] Sitting in the chair with the huge rod and reel, in the well of the sport-fishing vessel, it was inescapably apparent who had the edge. [“Sitting” dangles here, with nothing to modify.]
[3] Each of the hospitals in Brooklyn’s “brownstone belt” have lost patients from neighborhoods like Park Slope, Fort Greene, Boerum Hill, Prospect Heights and Carroll Gardens.
[4] Mr. Bruckner’s observations of new teachers were thorough and nerve-wracking.
[5] Mr. Brisbane said he expected to tackle a wide variety of subjects during his three-year term, including the affect on The Times’s journalistic standards of publishing articles for the Web on tight deadlines.
[6] One in four smokers use roll-ups. Do you see the error here?
[7] “I should say that his losses would be around $ 5m a year,” said a top cricket writer who have been following the fortunes of some of them.
[8] It might be said that editorial interpretations of aggregate data is in itself an indication of the spirit of the time. (The question here is: What are indications of the spirit of the time?)
