Grammar Girl here.

Today's topic is misplaced modifiers.

Of all the writing errors you can make, misplaced modifiers are among the most likely to confuse

your readers.

But they're also kind of fun because misplaced modifiers can give your sentences silly

meanings that you never intended.

If you're not careful, you can end up writing that your boss is a corn muffin instead

of saying that your boss invested in corn muffins.

I once worked with an editor who emailed everyone in the office the especially hilarious

sentences created by misplaced modifiers.

Each day we produced enough reports to keep two copy editors busy and many of the writers

were scientists, so there were always lots of opportunities to find misplaced modifiers.

The emails were entertaining unless you were the one who had written the offending sentence.

Modifiers are just what they sound like, words or phrases that modify something else.

Modifiers are modifiers that modify something you didn't intend them to modify.

For example, the word only is a modifier that's easy to misplace.

These two sentences mean different things.

I ate only vegetables, and I only ate vegetables.

The first sentence, I ate only vegetables, means that I ate nothing but vegetables.

No fruit, no meat, just vegetables.

The second sentence, I only ate vegetables, means that all I did with vegetables was

eat them.

...