A reader points out a recent brief that has several problems, including this sentence: With the help of a fellow officer, the boy was returned to his home nearby, where he had wandered away from shortly before Hunter spotted him.
The prepositional phrase at the beginning “With the help of a fellow officer” does not refer to the sentence’s subject, “the boy,” as it should. Instead it refers to the officer mentioned in the previous paragraphs, the one who found a 2-year-old boy wandering a Raleigh street.
Also, we should have edited that last part “where he wandered away from…” I think the “his home” doesn’t have a clear antecedent.
Here is a rewrite: With the help of a fellow officer, Hunter returned the boy to the child’s home nearby. The toddler apparently had wandered away from home shortly before Hunter spotted him.
I think the lead paragraph of the story has a problem, too: A police officer spotted a lone 2-year-old boy near a busy street while leaving the scene of a shooting Friday afternoon and helped the boy to safety. As written, it could be construed that the boy was “leaving the scene of a shooting.” Here is a possible rewrite: A police officer leaving the scene of a shooting spotted a lone 2-year-old boy near a busy street Friday and helped the boy to safety.
These sentences illustrate the problem of misplaced phrases. Place modifying phrases as close to the modified phrases as possible.
This article was originally posted by the Raleigh News & Observer, a subsidiary of The McClatchy Co.; is posted here to provide continuity; and is copyright © 2011 The News & Observer Publishing Company, which reserves the right to remove this post.