A modifier may be a one-word adverb or adjective; a phrase, such as a prepositional or participial phrase; or a clause, such as an adjective clause. At its best, a modifier describes, focuses, or qualifies the nouns, pronouns, and verbs it modifies. But when a writer overuses or incorrectly uses modifiers, the result may be verbose or even flowery writing.

Notice how Theodore Roosevelt uses modifiers to describe the virtues of “The Strenuous Life”:

We do not admire the man of timid peace. We admire the man who embodies victorious effort; the man who never wrongs his neighbor, who is prompt to help a friend, but who has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life.

With simple but precise adjectives, he sets up a contrast: the man of “timid peace” versus one of “victorious effort.” He follows with three relative clauses further defining the admirable man (“who…who…but who…”). He stresses at the end of the sentence the “virile qualities” of such a person and adds alliteration to the adjective-noun combination to leave us thinking about the “stern strife of actual life.” Roosevelt’s subject itself argues for muscular, concise writing as he defines an ethic of masculinity. His careful use of modifiers establishes a tension between passive and active responses to life’s struggles.

In Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain employs modifiers to convey the difficulty of learning “the shape of the river” when he was a cub riverboat pilot:

I went to work now to learn the shape of the river; and of all the eluding and ungraspable objects that ever I tried to get mind or hands on, that was the chief. I would fasten my eyes upon a sharp, wooded point that projected far into the river some miles ahead of me, and go to laboriously photographing its shape upon my brain; and just as I was beginning to succeed to my satisfaction, we would draw up toward it and the exasperating thing would begin to melt away and fold back into the bank! If there had been a conspicuous dead tree standing upon the very point of the cape, I would find that tree inconspicuously merged into the general forest, and occupying the middle of a straight shore, when I got abreast of it! No prominent hill would stick to its shape long enough for me to make up my mind what its form really was, but it was as dissolving and changeful as if it had been a mountain of butter in the hottest corner of the tropics.

Twain seems almost to struggle to find the language to describe the river: trying to plumb its mysteries is more difficult than understanding any of “the eluding and ungraspable objects” he has encountered. The adjectives “eluding” and “ungraspable” evoke the difficulty and contrast with “a sharp, wooded point” that he sees miles ahead, a point whose shape he tries “laboriously” to photograph on his brain. Twain juxtaposes two words—an adjective and an adverb—with opposite meanings to emphasize his frustration: “a conspicuous dead tree standing upon the very point” that seems a “tree inconspicuously merged into the general forest.” These modifiers help us feel what seems to him like a mirage, a “dissolving and changeful” form that echoes the “eluding and ungraspable objects” at the start of this description. The final simile may be the most striking image in the passage, but the modifiers have given us as readers a sense of how inadequate Twain feels trying to navigate what seems like the dreamscape of the Mississippi River.

Rhetorical and Stylistic Strategy

Like most language choices skilled writers make, picking the right modifiers contributes to achieving a particular effect and purpose. A clinical modifier has a different rhetorical effect than a lyrical one. Further, rhetorical strategies such as repetition and parallel structure apply to adjectives and adverbs, participial and prepositional phrases, and relative clauses.

Modifiers can enliven, focus, or qualify ideas. In this passage from Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser brings the scene in the slaughterhouse to life for his readers through modifiers that appeal to the senses:

Sides of beef suspended from an overhead trolley swing toward a group of men. Each worker has a large knife in one hand and a steel hook in the other. They grab the meat with their hooks and attack it fiercely with their knives. As they hack away, using all their strength, grunting, the place suddenly feels different, primordial. The machinery seems beside the point, and what’s going on before me has been going on for thousands of years—the meat, the hook, the knife, men straining to cut more meat.

In the first few sentences, Schlosser appeals to our visual and aural sensibilities to give us a vivid rendering of the gruesome scene. The sides of beef are “suspended from an overhead trolley.” Each worker is armed with a “large knife…and a steel hook” that allow him to attack the meat “fiercely.” We hear workers “grunting” as they hack at the meat until Schlosser says that despite the up-to-date machinery, the slaughterhouse feels “primordial”—a modifier meaning at the beginning of time, in an original state. Such an unusual modifier is likely to make us stop for a moment to think about the scene. Is Schlosser suggesting primordial as merely ancient, or does the word suggest a savagery out of sync with contemporary times?

Modifiers can add precision to a simple statement. In “The Subtle Problems of Charity,” Jane Addams describes the affluent woman who wants to be of assistance to the poor:

The charity visitor, let us assume, is a young college woman, well-bred and open-minded.

A few sentences later, Addams describes this woman’s awareness that

whatever her virtues may be, they are not the industrial virtues; that her untrained hands are no more fitted to cope with actual conditions than are those of her broken-down family.

In the first sentence, “young college woman” would identify the person, but the modifiers “well-bred and open-minded” give us a better sense of the perspective she brings to her situation. Similarly, in the second example, “untrained” and “broken-down” add vividness to the point Addams is making. Without the modifiers, we could understand the ideas Addams is expressing, but the emphasis and immediacy brought by those descriptive details would be missing.

Modifiers add concrete detail in both of the previous examples, but they can also add a sort of poetry to description and narration. In Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain reflects on his loss of wonder for and sense of mystery about the river once he became a skilled pilot.

All the grace, the beauty, the poetry, had gone out of the majestic river! I still kept in mind a certain wonderful sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me. A broad expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the middle distance the red hue brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came floating, black and conspicuous; one place a long, slanting mark lay sparkling upon the water; in another the surface was broken by boiling, tumbling rings, that were as many-tinted as an opal; where the ruddy flush was faintest, was a smooth spot that was covered with graceful circles and radiating lines, ever so delicately traced; the shore on our left was densely wooded, and the somber shadow that fell from this forest was broken in one place by a long, ruffled trail that shone like silver; and high above the forest wall a clean-stemmed dead tree waved a single leafy bough that glowed like a flame in the unobstructed splendor that was flowing from the sun. There were graceful curves, reflected images, woody heights, soft distances; and over the whole scene, far and near, the dissolving lights drifted steadily, enriching it every passing moment with new marvels of coloring.

Twain describes the sunset through the eyes of the boy who was awed by the mystery of the landscape. The ordinary, even vague adjective “wonderful” is qualified by the description that follows: “red hue brightened into gold,” a “solitary log” that was “black and conspicuous,” and a mark that “lay sparkling.” Twain describes patterns on the water’s surface being “broken by boiling, tumbling rings” and “graceful circles and radiating lines, ever so delicately traced.” Throughout the passage, these modifiers lead us to see the “new marvels of coloring” that the sunset impressed on the young Twain.

Modifiers can work through juxtaposition to emphasize contrast and through parallel structure to add emphasis. Let’s look at this passage by Joy Kasson about Buffalo Bill Cody:

Despite his claims to historical significance, Buffalo Bill finally knew that he would be remembered as a showman: “Let my show go on,” he was supposed to have said on his deathbed. Certainly, Cody tried until the very end to keep alive not only his mortal body but his heroic self as well. Always hoping a fortune would be just around the corner, always eager to provide a good show and to connect with the public, he played those last seasons not just to pay the bills but, perhaps more importantly, to sustain the narrative of his life.

Through juxtaposition of contrasting adjectives, she emphasizes the contrast of Cody’s “mortal body” with his “heroic self”—that is, his physical presence versus the legend. She emphasizes similarity by repeating the adverb “always” before two participial phrases: “Always hoping” and “always eager.”

Cautions

Studying how accomplished writers use modifiers helps us understand how to use them effectively. Following are some cautions to keep in mind when using modifiers in your own writing.

You need not avoid qualifiers altogether, but if you find yourself using them over and over, it’s time to check whether they’re really very effective.