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Grammar for Grownups Quiz 14

Dangling Phrases

"I once shot an elephant in my pajamas. How it got into my pajamas I'll never know." Grouch Marx dangled that one in the movie, Animal Crackers. Can you relocate the dangled phrases in the following examples? Clue: usually, these danglers are prepositional phrases.

1. Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg address while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope. (Beats flying carpets!)

2. The pop star will make her first Southern California concert appearance since the birth of her daughter at the Hollywood Bowl on August 22. (An act difficult to follow!)

3. FOR SALE: an Erard grand piano, the property of a lady about to travel in a walnut-wood case with carved legs. (Better than sitting cramped in the window seat.)

4. FOR SALE: Mahogany table by a lady with Chippendale legs. (Difficult to walk, isn't it!)

5. You can call your mother in London and tell her all about George's taking you out to dinner for just sixty cents. (Ah, those McD specials.)

6. She flung her life beneath an oncoming train which she had decided to take. (Did she save the fare?)

7. He whipped out the ace and flashed it at his captors that he had up his sleeve. (He appeared fashionable in his wide-sleeved shirt.)

8. New York's first commercial human-sperm bank opened Friday with semen samples from 18 men frozen in a stainless steel tank. (No comment!)

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