5 More Examples of Misplaced Modifiers

5 More Examples of Misplaced Modifiers 5 More Examples of Misplaced Modifiers 5 More Examples of Misplaced Modifiers By Mark Nichol Make sure that when you shoehorn additional information into a sentence, it is being wedged in at a location where its relationship to a word or phrase is clear. Each of the following sentences suffers from ambiguity because of sloppy syntax; the discussions and revisions clear the confusion. 1. Many students let friends and family know they were safe in social media posts. The sentence implies that students found safety within social media posts, but the fact that such posts were the medium by which students communicated their safe status to friends and family is best relocated to immediately after the subject: â€Å"Many students used social media to let friends and family know they were safe.† (This revision also places the key word, safe, where it is most effectively located- at the end of the sentence.) 2. Millennials consist of people born from 1980 to 2000; to put it more simply for them, since they grew up not having to do a lot of math in their heads, thanks to computers, their demographic group consists mostly of teens and twentysomethings. The location of â€Å"thanks to computers† creates initial ambiguity: Does it modify the preceding phrase, or the one that follows? Computers bear the blame for millennials’ lack of facility with cranial computation, or the age range of their demographic group is credited to computers? The former choice is the correct one, obviously, but it’s not clear until after the first or even second reading. To clarify the sentence’s intent, that parenthetical phrase should appear earlier in the sentence: â€Å"To put it more simply for millennials, since, thanks to computers, they grew up not having to do a lot of math in their heads, their demographic group consists mostly of teens and twentysomethings.† Better yet, to reduce comma clutter, write, â€Å"Millennials consist of people born from 1980 to 2000; to put it more simply for them- since, thanks to computers, they grew up not having to do a lot of math in their heads- their demographic group consists mostly of teens and twentysomethings.† 3. The Financial Conduct Authority is a financial regulatory body that operates independently of the UK government, whose responsibilities include maintaining financial market integrity. The simplest solution for this sentence- which unintentionally states that the UK government, rather than the Financial Conduct Authority, bears the specified responsibility- is to merely replace the comma with and to create a compound modifying phrase. But a more elegant solution is to place the trailing modifying phrase as a mid-sentence parenthetical comment: â€Å"The Financial Conduct Authority, whose responsibilities include maintaining financial market integrity, is a financial regulatory body that operates independently of the UK government.† 4. In fact, if employers do not reinforce learning, the forgetting curve shows that about 80 percent of important workplace information can be forgotten in the first month. According to this sentence, the failure of employers to reinforce learning causes the forgetting curve to demonstrate the percentage of key workplace information forgotten within a month. But the forgetting curve needs no such prompting. â€Å"The forgetting curve† is the subject, and it should be nearer the head of the sentence (after a brief modifying tag): â€Å"In fact, the forgetting curve shows that if employers do not reinforce learning, about 80 percent of important workplace information can be forgotten in the first month.† 5. If a third party is to be given consumers’ personal information, such as an auditing organization, data should be anonymized. An auditing organization is identified in this sentence as an example of consumers’ personal information. But an auditing organization is an example of a third party, so that parenthetical phrase should immediately follow â€Å"third party†: â€Å"If a third party, such as an auditing organization, is to be given healthcare consumers’ consumers’ personal information, data should be anonymized.† Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Grammar category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Writing a Reference Letter (With Examples)On Behalf Of vs. In Behalf OfQuiet or Quite?

Use of Quick Response Codes in Health Care Essay

Use of Quick Response Codes in Health Care - Essay Example QR technology is a smartphone enabled technology that uses smartphone applications to smart scan quick response (QR) codes of any range. However, concerns raised about the reliability of the use of QR codes by the public have questioned the credibility as to whether its main purpose is providing information about a patient during emergency cases or whether it is a government plan of gaining private information about its citizens (Samwald & Adlassnig, 2013). Defined as a matrix barcode readable by use of a Smartphone with an enabled right barcode reading applications, the technology’s applicability in the health care contains health information about a patient that can be used during emergencies (Bassendowski, 2012). Despite the high potential that this technology holds in attending patients during emergency cases, ethical and privacy concerns have been raised that make the public and healthcare institutions shy from adopting it. In demystifying the use of QR codes in healthcare, this paper will look at its background, advantages and disadvantages and give answers as to whether the technology is safe for adoption by the public. Quick Response Codes (QR) is the trademark technology for either a matrix barcode or two-dimensional code that holds information about a particular item, product or a person. Initially designed for the automotive industry in Japan by the â€Å"Denso Wave Corporation† in 1994, the technology has found a myriad of other uses due to its success. Original designers of QR Codes intended it to aid in tracking Toyota vehicles and their parts during the manufacturing process. Increasingly though, other businesses and corporations especially the packaging companies have adopted the technology. Finding its way to the United States as a an advertiser’s strategy of providing potential customers with information and URLs containing information about the company and product specifications, the technology has cross boarders and healthcare now is embracing it more and more, and recommending it to patients (Samwald, & Adlassnig, 2013). Healthcare’s exploitation of the technology seeks to use it in different ways for example a woman scheduling a mammogram by reading a QR Code that provides access to a website. They can offer patients with directions to online libraries for health information and educational videos as well as providing access to components of electronic health recor ds (EHRs). The simplicity and the ease of use of the technology have been cited by some scholars as the biggest reason for its recommendation to the healthcare. QR Codes do not require any specialized tags as (Samwald & Adlassnig, 2013) observes. It is a 2D technology, easily generated and printable on numerous surfaces without the use of any specialized equipment. People can develop these codes easily and embed their personal information that are of great help to the medical teams when treating them in an emergency case. the process of scanning and obtaining all the information, both personal and medical helps in saving a lot of time for the patient in case of an emergency. Learning the process of developing and using this technology by people takes a short while, whilst it has the potential of saving their lives in the long run (Bassendowski, 2012). Scanning and decoding of the information from the most obvious devices that are easily accessible such as Smartphones and iPhones sav es time for the doctors and nurses (Baum, Top of Form2013). The barcode, containing crucial information about the patient when scanned saves time of running preliminary tests or