Squinting modifiers

Should I look left or right?

Hey, everyone!

Adverbs are the most dangerous part of speech. Adding them incorrectly will have you splitting infinitives, squinting at modifiers, and overall weakening your writing. So today, we'll expand our conversation on misplaced modifiers by discussing the indecisive squinting modifier.

Let’s review the misplaced modifier

If you remember from yesterday, a misplaced modifier can occur when you have more than one noun in your sentence but need to clarify which noun you meant to modify. For example, in the sentence:

I like green men's shoes.

Am I modifying the first half of the sentence, meaning

I like shoes owned by green men.

Or am I modifying the last half of the sentence, to mean:

I like green shoes for men.

The squinting modifier

Akin to misplaced modifiers, a squinting modifier occurs when you use an adverb in the middle of a sentence without clarifying which half it modifies. Here's a real-world example:

This example of a squinting modifier showed up in a Duck Duck Go search about weight lifting.

Does the author mean that slowly lifting weights will build muscle or that lifting weights will build muscle slowly? One way to structure this title and remove the squinting modifier is:

Slow Lifting: How Slowly Lifting Weights Builds Muscle

How can you find and fix squinting modifiers?

The way I find and fix my squinting modifiers is to look for adverbs in my writing that appear in the middle of a sentence. Once located, I apply the adverb to the first part of the sentence and also the last part of the sentence. Then, I need to restructure my sentence if the adverb works both ways (and I'm loosely using the word works here since squinting modifiers often result in ridiculous imagery).

A challenge

Some squinting modifiers are easy to spot because they make your sentence sound silly, like my green men example above. However, some are more difficult to spot because they make sense both ways. Here's an example:

Helping the poor often generates pride.

Does the adverb often modify the first half of the sentence, meaning:

Frequently helping the poor can cause pride.

Or does the adverb modify the last half of the sentence to mean:

Helping the poor causes one to become prideful more often than not.

Now, time for the challenge. I have intentionally included a squinting modifier in the first paragraph of this post. Can you find it? Let me know in the comments.