I'm still really confused with this one; I posted it up a couple of days ago but never got the answer
Is this a dangling modifier?
To the victor goes the privelage of writing history.
-MC
I see no dangling modifier here. (Correct the spelling of "privilege," though!)
Here's a webpage on dangling modifiers and how to correct them:
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/modifiers.htm#danglers
I just don't see anything like this in that sentence.
This is one other I was curious about:
To the pier raced the eager young anglers, annoying quiet vetarans.
I don't this this is one...is it?
-MC
Did the anglers annoy the veterans? If so, then it's fine. If not, then rephrase.
What? So it's not one? I can't rephrase, that's how theyve given it to me.
-MC
Then it's not.
The only thing I see that is common to both of those sentences is that they start with a prepositional phrase (to ... ) instead of the subject. I think they are awkwardly written sentences, but I don't see modifier misplacement here.
Yes, the sentence "To the victor goes the privilege of writing history" contains a dangling modifier. A dangling modifier is a phrase or clause that does not clearly and logically modify a specific word in the sentence. In this case, the phrase "To the victor" is the modifier, but it is not clear what it is intended to modify.
To fix the dangling modifier, you need to clarify what the modifier is referring to. In this case, we can rephrase the sentence as "The victor is privileged to write history." Here, the subject "the victor" is clearly linked to the action of being privileged to write history.
Identifying and fixing dangling modifiers can be done by asking yourself who or what the modifier is describing and ensuring that the subject of the main clause is the one carrying out the action being described.
In this case, the dangling modifier was fixed by making "the victor" the subject of the sentence and linking it directly to the action of being privileged.