1. The senator talked about the high cost of living with several women.

2. I propose the following: Instead of a permanent marriage certificate, a temporary license would be issued to a couple that would expire in two years.

It's nice to be understood clearly the first time you say something. Unfortunately, that won't always happen if you write sentences like those above. In the first, a casual reader might be puzzled about just what the senator did with several women. The second one could suggest a tragic end for couples with a temporary marriage license. Sentences like these can easily slip out when we are speaking, and often our tone of voice helps eliminate any confusion about what we really mean. In writing, however, we need to make things clear the first time (since we probably won't be around to clear up the confusion).

You can probably see how moving a couple of word groups in the sentences above could prevent the confusion. In each case, the word groups that lead to the confusion are describing (or modifying) something in the sentence, but what is being described is too far separated from the words that describe it. "With several women" should be closer to "the senator talked"' since it describes whom he talked with (not whom he lived with). And, of course, it's the license that would expire in two years (not the couple), so we should move those ideas close together.

Any phrase, or even a single word, that describes something in a sentence could be called a modifier since it changes somehow the way we see the thing described. The mistake in each of our sample sentences above is called a misplaced modifier because the modifier is too far from what it modifies (or describes). To avoid this kind of confusion in your own writing, try to remember this simple rule:

Always place the modifier as close as possible to the thing it is modifying in a sentence.

No rule makes much sense until you have occasion to apply it to your own writing, and you may never use sentences exactly like the ones we've discussed so far. Nevertheless, the rule can be helpful.

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