Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier
Monday, November 9th, 2009
Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier
This book was a pleasant surprise! It was an impulse decision to buy because it was offered at a significant discount. I honestly wondered if I had just wasted my money, but The Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier is a gem and worth the full price! The book focuses on seven of the weakest areas of most writing: Passive voice, nominalization, vague -ing words, weak verbs, misplaced modifiers, super-long sentences, and wordy writing. Each of the seven chapters begins with a mystery that contains several sentences that use the weak writing that will be focused on for that chapter, then it goes on to explain the problem and how to detect and fix it. There are lots of examples, each showing a sentence with the weakness and then how it could be written better. The Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier would be great to go with a junior or high school level creative writing class. Matter of fact, that is what my sister-in-law is doing with it. I plan on incorporating the ideas into my 5th grader’s writing. I’d highly recommend it to all homeschooling families who are concerned with their students’ writing or who would like to focus on specific writing issues.
