Ironing out all the wrinkles, the pants looked much more presentable.
Hmmmm. Did the pants do the ironing? Is this a misplaced modifier?
No, the pants did not do the ironing. In this sentence, "ironing out all the wrinkles" is a participial phrase that functions as an adjective to describe the subject of the sentence. Participial phrases often modify the noun or pronoun that immediately precedes them.
To determine if this is a misplaced modifier, we need to check if the modifier is placed in a way that causes confusion or ambiguity. In this case, the phrase is placed after the noun it modifies ("pants"). Since there are no other nouns or pronouns in the sentence, it is clear that the modifier is intended to describe the pants. Therefore, in this context, the phrase "ironing out all the wrinkles" is correctly modifying the pants and does not create a misplaced modifier.