Listening to his batting coach’s advice, Mark McGwire’s hand-eye coordination was noticeably improved compared to the prior season.
Trying to break the record, the pressure Mark McGwire faced was intense.
A fan of the game since his childhood in Cuba, the dream for Sammy Sosa was always to play in the big leagues.
As he stepped up to the plate, the fans were excited to see if Mark McGwire would break the record, a record that had stood for 37 years.
As he tried to break the single season home run record, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa helped the league set television viewership records.
All of the above may seem fine. Indeed, it’s easy to understand what the author was trying to say. However, on the test, these would all be considered wrong answer choices. This error is called a dangling modifier, and it’s one of the hardest to spot on the test.
Let’s take it sentence by sentence to see the error and how it might be corrected.
Listening to his batting coach’s advice, Mark McGwire’s hand-eye coordination was noticeably improved compared to the prior season.
Who was listening to his batting coach’s advice? It was Mark McGwire; however, the sentence is technically saying that it is the hand-eye coordination that was listening to the advice. This is illogical, so we could change that to
Listening to his batting coach’s advice, Mark McGwire improved his hand-eye coordination, particularly compared to the prior season.
Now let’s check out the next sentence:
Trying to break the record, the pressure Mark McGwire faced was intense.
Who was trying to break the record? As written, the sentence is technically saying the pressure was what was trying to break the record. That’s illogical and could be fixed like this:
Trying to break the record, Mark McGwire faced intense pressure.
Can you start to spot these errors? Look for an introductory clause, followed by a comma, followed by a noun. The noun after the comma needs to be whatever is being described in the introductory clause:
A fan of the game since his childhood in Cuba, the dream for Sammy Sosa was always to play in the big leagues.
Here, the introductory clause is “a fan of the game since his childhood in Cuba.” The noun after the comma is “the dream.” A dream cannot be a fan, so there’s a dangling modifier. Here’s a potential fix:
A fan of the game since his childhood in Cuba, Sammy Sosa always always dreamed of playing in the big leagues.
Next sentence:
As he stepped up to the plate, the fans were excited to see if Mark McGwire would break the record, a record that had stood for 37 years.
Who stepped up to the plate? The fans? Well, that doesn’t make sense. Here’s a potential fix. Notice here we’re changing the introductory clause. The previous examples involved us changing the noun:
As Mark McGwire stepped up to the plate, the fans were excited to see if he would break the record, a record that had stood for 37 years.
Here’s the last example:
As he tried to break the single season home run record, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa helped the league set television viewership records.
This one might be the hardest of all. It may seem like the modifying phrase “as he tried to break the single season home run record” is correctly modifying the noun “Mark McGwire.” However, the subject of the sentence is “Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa,” which is a plural compound subject. Again, we can edit the introductory clause to fix that:
As they tried to break the single season home run record, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa helped the league set television viewership records.