Seen on a YouTube thumbnail:
She wants to become a YouTuber, which as a comedian makes me furious.
Did you catch the problem(s)?
How would you rewrite the above to avoid the grammatical fuckup(s)?
Thursday, April 16, 2026
2 comments:
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How about this: She wants to become a YouTuber, which, as a comedian, makes me furious.
ReplyDeleteThe problem we've got here is a dangling modifier. After a modifier, the subject of the clause has to relate to the modifier, otherwise the modifier has nothing to modify, i.e., it's left dangling.
DeleteExamples:
• As a child, French was difficult. (French was a child?)
• Sitting on the branch, the urge to poop on the child overcame the crow. (The urge was sitting on the branch?)
So if we go back to this—
...as a comedian, makes me furious
—is the comedian making the comedian furious?
Possible rewrite:
She wants to become a YouTuber which, as a comedian, I find infuriating.
Normally, you put a comma before "which" (like in the original sentence), but you also don't want to over-comma the sentence, so I switched the comma's position, giving it a parenthetical function along with a second comma.