Repairing a Tangled Sentence
A student's field report contains this sentence:
'Walking along the creek bank at dusk, the plastic bags caught in the reeds were recorded by our group, which surprised Ms Okafor because they had not been there last year.'
Ms Okafor's marking notes say: (i) the sentence must keep every piece of information - who walked, what was recorded, where, when, Ms Okafor's surprise, and the comparison with last year; (ii) it must be no more than two sentences; (iii) active voice is preferred unless passive is genuinely clearer.
1. Identify the two places where the reader cannot tell what the writer means, and explain what each one makes unclear.
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1. The opening modifier dangles. 'Walking along the creek bank at dusk' is meant to describe the group, but the nearest noun is 'the plastic bags'. As written, the bags are doing the walking. The reader must invent the real subject.
2. Two pronouns with no clear referent.
- 'which surprised Ms Okafor' - 'which' could be the recording, the finding, or the fact that bags were in the reeds.
- 'they had not been there last year' - 'they' could be the bags or the reeds, and 'there' could be the bank or the reeds specifically.
There is a third, smaller problem: 'were recorded by our group' hides the actor and makes the sentence longer than it needs to be, against the marker's third note.
Model answer: the dangling modifier and the ambiguous 'which'/'they' are the two genuine breakdowns; the passive is a style issue rather than a failure of meaning.
2. Rewrite the sentence in no more than two sentences, in active voice, keeping all six pieces of information. Explain one choice you made.
Read the worked answer
Model rewrite:
'At dusk our group walked along the creek bank and recorded plastic bags caught in the reeds. Ms Okafor was surprised, because the bags had not been there last year.'
Why it works:
- The group is now the subject of 'walked' and 'recorded', so the opening modifier has nothing to dangle from.
- 'the bags had not been there last year' - the only plausible referent for 'they' is now the bags, and 'there' points to the reeds just mentioned.
- Ms Okafor's surprise is tied to a noun ('the bags'), not to a whole clause, so 'which' is replaced by something specific.
One justified choice: splitting the sentence at the surprise. Keeping it as one sentence would force the reader to hold two clauses of context before reaching the point; the split lets the finding land first and the reaction second.
Alternative accepted: 'At dusk our group walked along the creek bank and recorded plastic bags caught in the reeds, a finding that surprised Ms Okafor because no bags had been there last year.' - one sentence, and 'a finding' resolves the 'which' ambiguity.