Modifiers Possessive Poison

By Abhishek Tomar on Aug 24, 2009 with Comments 0

As you have already learned about Possessive form in the pronoun and you are aware of the dangers of possessive form you should also be aware of Possessive for in the modifiers also. Very often in GMAT dangling modifiers are used.These dangling modifiers contain possessive nouns and here you are again in trouble.

Example

Unskilled in complex math, Mack’s score on the entrance exam was poor.

Here Mack’s is in possessive form where as “Unskilled in complex math” is talking about Mack’ Score but it should be MACK. Clearly if you ask a question “who is unskilled in complex math” the answer would be Mack. So to correct it we remove Mack’s score and use Mack simply.

Unskilled in complex math, Mack did not score well on the entrance exam.