FTCE › Knowledge of Sentence Structures
When does a dangling modifier occur?
When a modifier used in a dependent clause does not match up to a grammatical object in the main clause
When the subject of a dependent introductory clause matches the subject of the main clause
When a modifier is not placed in close enough proximity to the object it modifies
None of these
Dangling modifier errors are extremely common, all the way to (and past) high school graduation. If a sentence begins with a dependent introductory clause, the subject of that clause must be the same as the subject of the main clause that follows, otherwise the modifier will modify a word that is not clearly present in the sentence, thus "dangling."
For example: "Having finished the repairs, the car drove out of Jim's Autobody Shop."