While I’m hiking The Long Trail, I’m reposting old favorites. This one originally published October 22, 2013.
The English language on word order depends.
If that sentence doesn’t convince you, try this:
Take the adverb “only” and place it in different positions in the following sentence.
He said, “I love you.” (Nice thought.)
Only he said, “I love you.” (No one else said it.)
He only said, “I love you.” (He said nothing else.)
He said, “Only I love you.” (No one else does.)
He said, “I love only you.” (He doesn’t love any one else.)
He said, “I love you only.” (His love is exclusive.)
In The Elements of Style, Strunk and White advise that “Modifiers should come, if possible, next to the word they modify.” When modifiers are misplaced, the result is always ambiguity – and often hilarity as well. Consider this Classified Ad: “Piano for sale by lady with carved legs.”
Because English depends on word order, “with carved legs” describes the lady, not the piano. The prepositional phrase needs to be placed in proximity to what it describes – the piano.
Here’s an example from The Harbrace College Handbook. “The doctor said that there was nothing seriously wrong with a smile.” I used Harbrace when I taught college nearly thirty years ago. Surely there have been advances in medicine since then, but smiles have always been terrific, especially when it’s the doctor who’s smiling while delivering the good news. The doctor said with a smile that there was nothing seriously wrong.
The rule for clarity is to always place modifiers as close as possible to the words they describe. Modifers include adverbs, adjectives, phrases or clauses, and they become misplaced when they are too far from what they describe. Here’s an example from The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing Well.
The two sisters were reunited after 18 years at the checkout counter.
I know, I know – it sometimes seems as if it does take forever to check out, but more likely, the author really meant, After 18 years, the two sisters were reunited at the checkout counter.
Here are some other examples of misplaced prepositional phrases that should make you laugh – and help you keep your words in order.
- “One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I’ll never know.” -Groucho Marx
- Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg address while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope. (Was the envelope harnessed to a coach?)
- We found the address he gave me without difficulty. (What’s so hard about giving someone an address?)
- We watched the tree come crashing down with bated breath. (Trees have bated breath?)
- Squirrels ran up the tree with their mouths full of nuts. (Trees have mouths full of nuts?)
- Under the couch, Dave spotted the cat playing with catnip. (What’s Dave doing under the couch?)
- On the hay wagon, the horse pulled the group of students. In the ice, several skaters saw the large crack. (Why is the horse on the wagon, and how did the skaters get in the ice?)
- A lion startled the hunter with a ferocious roar. (Oh, those roaring hunters . . . )
- The profits were deposited safely in the bank from the bake sale. (Did the baked goods taste like money?)
- “He dialed the number at the hospital of Dr. X.” (Who did he dial? Was Dr. X holding him hostage at his hospital?)
While it’s great to make your readers laugh, you can make sure they’re laughing at what you say and not how you’ve said it by observing the English language’s dependency on word order.
Deborah Lee Luskin taught grammar and rhetoric at Columbia, where she earned her PhD in English Literature before moving to Vermont to write novels and raise chickens and daughters. She is the author of the award-winning novel, Into The Wilderness. Learn more at www.deborahleeluskin.com
Thank you for the amusing reminder on the importance of word order.
You’re welcome. Glad you liked it! -Deborah.
http://davidgaines.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/try-not.jpg
Word order is always a giggle. One of those things you sometimes don’t see yourself during proofreading
So true – and so embarrassing when it happens! – Deborah.
thank you! that was fun!
You’re welcome. Thanks for reading the blog. -Deborah.
I agree, I really enjoyed reading this post Deborah!
I always loved that Groucho quote!
What a wonderful way to start the day. Laughing while learning 🙂
Made me smile. Great post, thank you
Made me smile too, Deborah. I hear that sort of word order confusion on the news all the time. Then again, I also think of inserting something into the word order for good effect. That also makes me smile. 🙂 ‘To boldly go where no man has gone before.’
I teach English as a second language. Sometimes it is a challenge to explain the importance of order, with similarly funny results.
I teach ESL too, and I was just thinking this is a great way to introduce the importance of word order. Great post, cheers!
Oh really
Are you spam?
Funny! I might have to snag a couple of these for future use. I especially like the one about Lincoln. Since we recently visited Gettysburg, I can just see him riding in on an envelope.
I laughed so hard, I almost fell off my chair! This should be required reading for all students of English!
Useful, I quite like things like this, but ‘depends’ is not a modifier…
No, ‘depends’ is not a modifier; it’s a verb. For clarity, English demands clear word order for all parts of speech.
Oh I know. I write language courses – it’s just your examples and the title couldn’t be more different. with a commar, your title was perfectly grammatical.
I’m certainly not criticising, as I wrote – I quite like these sorts of things.
Incredibly funny, and scary post! Thank goodness I found this page. I don’t think I can afford to hire you as a personal tutor!
Oh, man, you know you’re a writer when you belly laugh at mangled grammar as if it were a SNL skit. Have you seen the classic church signs and announcements?
Examples:
“The ladies of the church have cast off clothing of every kind. They can be seen in the church basement Saturday.”
“Wednesday the ladies liturgy will meet. Mrs. Johnson will sing “Put me in my little bed accompanied by the pastor.”
“For those of you who have children and don’t know it, we have a nursery downstairs.”
Thank you for these! They’re terrific examples – and funny!
Reblogged this on Not for Attribution and commented:
Word order matters!
Great! I love this. English really is a tricky language isn’t it?
As a non native speaker I gotta admit Im not certain I wouldnt make these…mistakes.
Whats wrong with We found the address he gave me without difficulty. (What’s so hard about giving someone an address?)? xD How do u wanna say it? We didn’t have any difficulties finding the address he gave me? Still, sounded right to me 😀 And maybe a few others too.
MY INGRISH SUK 🙁
This one’s tricky, and I had to think it through. In fact, spoken, no one would blink (which is why it “sounds” right to you). But as written, “without difficulty” modifies how he gave the address, not what was intended, which is that finding the address wasn’t difficult. Any clearer?
If I weren’t a native speaker, I’d be hopeless at this language.
Eh, I get the logic, but as u said, it wouldnt bother me 😛 I think its better, already bothered by mistakes in my mother tongue lol. But yea good post though 😀
So easy to slip up on this! Thank you for the reminder. 🙂
Fun post!
This is great! I need to show this to my kids. Humor is such a good way to teach something.
Great post! Very informative. I especially love the quips at the end.
Love this post. It made this English nerd’s day plus it gave me a reminder to always revise my work. Thank you!
Lovely!
As an English teacher myself, and a word nerd, I love this!
Such a great post! Hilarious, and a great reminder for us bloggers to proofread! Thanks! 🙂
I fell off the chair laughing so hard. (Get it?) 😛
Yes, must watch out for laughing chairs!
Hahaha! Love nerdy language jokes!
it’s nice
http://simpleshoesmall.com/goods-738-ASH-Women-Wedge-Boots-Russet-Suede-Yahoo-Bis-Wedge.html
Reblogged this on austroisan and commented:
[…] The English Language On Word Order Depends. […]
Thanks!
To order words to do anything is a tricky business! Enjoyed the piece – thanks.
Ain’t that the truth?!
Excellent and enriching. Thank you for taking the time to share these small details with us.
Congratulations on being freshly pressed.
Thank you!
“Squirrels ran up the tree with their mouths full of nuts.”
I can’t see how this one would be misinterpreted, since the noun ‘squirrels’ agrees with the relative pronoun ‘their’ in number (plural), but not ‘tree’ (singular).
Haha, I got a good giggle out of these! I remember learning about this in Year Five or Six. The sentence that sticks with me went something like, ‘The hungry passengers cheered when the food arrived, waving their knives and forks in the air.’ And it had a little picture of the plates of food waving knives and forks 😀 Tickled my ten-year-old humour!
When I learnt German, I discovered that they use quite a different word order sometimes. It was amusing to come home and re-read letters I’d written in English, because sometimes I’d forget, and would write English sentences with German word order!
Language is so much fun 🙂 Congratulations on being Freshly Pressed!
Reblogged this on Drizzles and Lightning.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
Another example of the complexity of the English language; why kids should want to pay attention to their English teachers., and why parents must support teachers—especially English teachers.
Very lively and interesting. I want to mention one feature of your “only” examples at the beginning: “only” is usually thought of as an adverb, but it is an adjective as well, modifying nouns, as in “Only he said, “I love you” and “I love only you.”
Your post really cracked me up!! =-)
You reminded me of a punctuation lesson I was taught many moons ago.
Punctuate this sentence:
Woman without her man is useless.
The meanings can be completely different all because of comma placement.
Woman, without her, man is useless.
Woman, without her man, is useless.
Congrats on getting pressed!!
Very timely post for me. I have the word “only” on the first page of my site. I have it in the wrong spot. I noticed the error after reading your post.
This was such an interesting and amusing way of remind people of the importance of word order in the english language. I remember learning this lesson, or at least a similar lesson, in multiple English classes throughout High School. I think people often make this mistake when they are talking or having a conversation because nobody really thinks about the “grammatically correct” way to say what they’re trying to say. In writing, however, it’s easier to focus on something like this. Unfortunately (or fortunately, if I’m trying to find a good laugh), I have seen these mistakes very often in writing. I can tell it drives you crazy, as much as it drives me crazy. Thanks for the funny insight!
I love your blog….this was really amusing, thanks!
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I decided I didn’t want to comment anymore because I’d end up saying something silly causing you to frown at me for it!
I actually enjoyed this post very much. It made me realise how blind we are, how tailored we’ve become to reading bad sentences and understating them anyway (by context). 🙂
I remember my mom getting seriously upset we hadn’t learned about misplaced modifiers in school and going off on a rant about this one from her old textbook: “My parents bought a bicycle for my sister with red handlebars.”
In other news, I enjoy your blog (:
Reblogged this on Fluorescent Adolescent and commented:
Such an interesting way to look at word placement. And it’s about love… *swoooon*
This is brilliant – so many people today could do with brushing up on their basic grammar skills!
Awesome blog 😉
Nice
Reblogged this on Malala Yousufzai CNN – A New Beginning for Hope, Courage & Motivation and commented:
SOMETHING NICE TO LEARN IN ENGLISH WITH EASE
“SOMETHING NICE TO LEARN WITH EASE IN ENGLISH”
thank you very much, deborah! i am a german studying english language and culture and i have to admit that learning something about word order is much more fun when it actually makes you laugh 😉
thanks for the reminder and the enjoyable post.
Love it, love it, love it. I’m a missionary in Ukraine, and I really enjoy the ability I have with the Ukrainian language to speak my mind without almost any thought to word order. (The grammar system is similar to Latin.) Sometimes I wonder if it’s affected my English. I’ve taught English a little here, and that is one of the first things I tell people – English is dependent upon word order. It’s like a train, while Ukrainian is like a box. As long as all the ingredients are there, you can give the box to someone else.
Word order is really important in English. This is actually a great reminder that anyone who use english must consider the word order in their sentence. Thanks for sharing this!
lovely post
😉
Word order matters, right you are. And the next question is: Why does word order matter so much in English? I thought for a sec that you were going to resort to the standard American argument: “Because Strunk and White say it does!” Omit needless words, write directly! By all means, and do so first because the language doesn’t like it when you move sentence parts around, and second because Strunk and White tell you to. If they had had a cross-linguistic perspective they could have really helped undergraduates. For other languages word order is secondary to inflection when assigning function. See Hawkins, A Comparative Typology of English and German. Humor is fun and here linguistics is more helpful.
I love this article! Thanks, I needed a good laugh today or is it Today I needed a good laugh, thanks:)
Hi Deborah!
I’m simply loving this post! And, i’m gonna share this on my Facebook, and with my colleagues.
I’m just a new writer in the block, and i seriously believe i should follow your blog, and check out your site often.
Thanks so much for this post!
Ashok
Fine, but it’s easy to be too prescriptive in ruling how language is to be used. Understanding relies on context and interpretation too. Where a sentence is ambiguous, then adjacency of modifier and modified terms is important. “I spoke to the man with a microphone” could be ambiguous: but your example (not the silliet) “We watched the tree come crashing down with bated breath” is perfectly clear. There is no sensible alternative meaning. The alternative would have to be “We watched, with bated breath, the tree come crashing down” (inelegant to distance the object “tree” from its verb “watched”) or “With bated breath we watched the tree come crashing down” which is acceptable but foregrounds the bated breath, perhaps not the intention of the speaker.
More on word order here : http://caseword.wordpress.com/2013/02/26/when-hitler-came-to-power-i-was-in-the-bath/
If only every writer would take heed…. Congratulations on being Freshly Pressed.
Loved reading this! I find myself noticing passages such as these and shaking my head in disappointment. Thank you for sharing!
What a wonderful post. It’s amazing, isn’t it, the way in which meaning can be subtly (or markedly) altered by the positioning of words? It allows such precision and nuance. I studied physics at uni and in written work it was imperative that meanings were not messed with – writing had to be specific and unambiguous. Agh, gotta love language!
Once upon a time, English was a case based language and as such, did not depend primarily on word order for comprehension or cohesion. The only remainder of this we have is in the genitive (possessive) ‘s marking, wherein the apostrophe + -s signifies that the marked noun possesses the thing that follows, as in ‘Rose’s book’: ROSE possess the book. Case based languages do not need to necessarily depend upon word order because they have extra inflectional markings to designate what grammatical function the noun in question is performing, as in the above example. Learners of English whose native tongue is cased based have a hard time with the word order concept. What’s important, however, is comprehension, and context is key. There are plenty of ‘correct’ sentences that are ambiguous: That’s a German car dealership (a dealership of German cars? A car dealership owned by Germans?), the man saw the alien with the telescope (the man used a telescope to see the alien? The man saw an alien who had a telescope?), etc. etc. Beware prescriptive English! It serves to alienate.
I also love language! The quirks of English are pretty unique because its rather dogmatic word order leads to the classic funnies that you mentioned. Other languages that I know, where gender and number are inevitably expressed, there is an impersonal pronoun, and word order is not so military, can hardly keep up with the ‘funnies’ in the confusion of English.
Those sentences do not sound funny when spoken because the tone of voice, and the slight stops, make them more comprehensible. I think that prescriptive English must always be taken into consideration when writing, and violated only when the writer is very sure of communicating what he/she meant, not only how he/she said.
Great blog, yours. (there! i violated the norm of sentence-making with a phrase that – however – is effective…) Best, Vera
BTW: I am re-reading Moby Dick and I am amazed at Whitman’s superior skill with the English language. I had read it when I was learning English and it was very difficult to follow then. Now it is a feast. V.
Whitman?
oh oh! you are right…Melville, yes Melville…. it applies to him. THANKS FOR THE CORRECTION !!! v.
Been looking at this a bit more… If the title of the blog doesn’t give the lie to its thesis, and if my earlier comment isn’t convincing, then this surely does:
http://www.futilitycloset.com/2012/10/23/exeunt/
How many ways can you shuffle “the plowman homeward plods his weary way” and still keep more or less the same meaning? Mathematically there are 5,040 ways to assemble the words, each as good as any other. Poetically are are many ways, but Gray has found the only one to give the sentence immortality. Semantically, it’s hard to find a word order that is syntactically convincing that provides a different meaning.
And this all goes to show the infinite flexibility of the Egglish language, and the ability of the user to extract meaning.
I love this and I look forward to reading more. 🙂
Reblogged this on Nutshell and commented:
Yeah, I’ll say.
Wonderful post! As an ESL teacher, word order in English is a tricky thing to teach beyond the basic SVO format. Mind if I reblog this on my ESL blog?
Reblogged this on So, You Think You Can Teach ESL? and commented:
I found this nifty post from Live to Write – Write to live, via the “Freshly Pressed” section. As an ESL teacher, English word order can be somewhat tricky to teach. Give it a read.
This was a fun read and for speakers of Turkish which has a rather free syntax order, it may be even harder to handle English syntax! 🙂
Reblogged this on Education Concierge and commented:
An amusing explanation about the importance of word order. My favorite example: “Piano for sale by lady with carved legs.”
Reblogged this on Houston Recruiter Spot and commented:
Good to think about when writing a resume.
I love this. I am quick to find a misplaced modifier in another’s writing, and want to kick myself when I am guilty of the same infraction!
It’s things like these that remind me how hopelessly complicated English is. I feel bad for the foreigners who lose themselves in the myriad of tenses and rules and irregularities, while we native speakers can go off and learn others’ far simpler languages with not even half the effort.
Reblogged this on Illuminating thoughts&feelings.
This is really cool 🙂
Reblogged this on Meraki girl and commented:
I love all things grammar! Word order is something often overlooked and this is a great article on how important it is!
Reblogged this on Reading Enthusiasms and commented:
oh 😐
Ahh, good old garden path sentences. I did an assignment on them for my undergrad. Great post. 🙂
Reblogged this on Inside My Mind.
Excellent post! I enjoyed the examples in the post and a few of the comments. Reminds me of a book: Anguished English by Richard Lederer. (I think that’s how you spell his last name.)
Reblogged this on Maunderings of a Baffled Man and commented:
Yesterday’s post was a rant about a teacher and textbook disguised as a rant about writing. One of my points involved grammar. I’m reblogging a post also concerned with lax grammar. Enjoy.
nice
Reblogged this on The War Fish's Lair and commented:
To all my writer/editor friends, take heed. 🙂
I don’t think he is telling the truth. what does he really need, I wonder?
Reblogged this on janeisi.
Thank you for writing this the way you did, made me nod and smile a lot.. I understand exactly what you mean, I am pretty annoyed by this fact too and also words like “ArkanSAS & KanSAS”
Honestly, why are they pronounced so differently? Arrr!
Reblogged this on Stark Writing Crazy and commented:
I’d add that half of the skill of writing poetry (or poetic prose) is knowing what you’re doing when you play around with modifiers.
Reblogged this on The Wandering Life of a Foreigner and commented:
Nice!!
Reblogged this on elcinalobo.
The English language is beautiful. I love when it is used well.
Reblogged this on Muhammad Attique's Blog.
Reblogged this on siandoblog.
Reblogged this on On Becoming Myself and commented:
The significance of word order. I found this post quite amusing. I’m probably guilty of this myself.
Love the grammar lesson. I need a lot of help in this area and you teach it so well.
What a lovely compliment. Thank you! You are already ahead of the game with your willingness to learn.
Try teaching this live to a group of teenagers or young adults. It’s the most fun I’ve ever had in a grammar class ever!
As an aspiring linguist, I find this very interesting. 😀
I’ve recently started blogging about language and linguistics and I’d love for you to check out my blog. Thanks .
eudaimonicpolyglot.wordpress.com
https://eudaimonicpolyglot.wordpress.com
Great examples of misplaced modifiers!
Thank you
Regards. Marie.
Thanks. Glad to see this post is still making the rounds!
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