Identify and correct any dangling modifers in these sentences.
5. Beginning to erupt around late July, larger eruptions didn’t start until the middle of August.
Eruptions did not start until late July, and larger eruptions began in the middle of August.
To identify and correct any dangling modifiers in the given sentence, we need to check if the modifier is modifying the correct noun or pronoun in the sentence.
In the given sentence, the modifier "Beginning to erupt around late July" is placed at the beginning of the sentence. However, it is not clear what it is modifying. It seems to be modifying "larger eruptions," but according to the word order, it is modifying the subject of the main clause, which is missing in the sentence.
To correct the dangling modifier, we can rephrase the sentence to ensure clarity:
"Although smaller eruptions began around late July, larger eruptions didn't start until the middle of August."
In the corrected sentence, we added the word "Although" to establish a clear cause-effect relationship and specified that smaller eruptions began around late July before introducing the larger eruptions starting in the middle of August, thus resolving the dangling modifier.