Modifiers

By all means aim longer as long as you can hit the bull's eye.





Modifiers help to make descriptions vivid provided they are placed correctly.

Look at the following sentence taken from a popular national English daily.

He successfully underwent surgery to remove the bullet.

"Successfully" is a modifier which is an adverb modifying the finite verb "underwent". It has the tendency to indicate or imply that the person had a phobia of undergoing surgery and had overcome such phobia and underwent the surgery. However, this does not appear to be real meaning which can be shown by recasting the sentence to be: He underwent surgery to remove the bullet successfully.

Then, the said adverb modifies that non-finite verb (which is an infinitive) "to remove" which is the actual intention of the writer.

Modifiers (which are adjectives and adverbs and their respective phrases and clauses) must be placed as near as possible to the words they modify and if not, the resulting sentences may not reflect the intended meanings.

Delay is preferable to error.
-- Thomas Jefferson