Check these retro danglers; can you make them see-worthy? And we need a Krakatoic word for feisty.

Colleague Kathleen Much forwards the opinion that "it may be time to discuss dangling modifiers again. Here's a notification from Arts & Entertainment (15 Sept. 2003) about one of its shows:

"'Explore the case that became a national sensation after Colleen finally escaped. Raped, tortured and kept confined, often inside a coffin-like box beneath the Hookers' waterbed, the Hookers appeared mild-mannered and church-going.'

"Of course the author means that Colleen, and not the Hookers, was kept under the bed. It's hard to get to church when you're in a box."

The so-called dangling--meaning unattached--construction persists in marring published prose at almost every level. In the cite just above, the phrase "Raped, tortured and kept confined ..." clamps onto "the Hookers" because it has no other logical place to go. One of scores of ways to recast this: "Colleen was raped, tortured and kept confined, often inside a coffin-like box beneath the Hookers' waterbed." (Park the business about the mild-mannered Hookers in another spot.)

The following solecism ran in this column in May 2000; were you paying attention?

"Identify and correct the error in this Boston Globe sentence: 'Walking by one evening, the lights had been left on in ... the conference room.'" Just in case the cure eludes, here's what you needed to know: Participial phrase Walking by one evening does not logically attach to the lights, which is the subject of the main clause and which do not perambulate. It is left to dangle; fix by making the main clause say "(Someone) noticed that the lights had been left on."

Here is one more retro dangler, one that shows a participle need not always set the stage for the gaffe:

"Born in Boston in 1939, Whitney's grandparents brought him to Chicago as a child." A quick check of the common-sense meter will confirm that it was Whitney, not his grandparents, who was born in Beantown in 1939. The rewrite: "Born in Boston in 1939, Whitney was brought to Chicago by his grandparents when he was small.... "

* The pricey Coldwater Creek catalog offers 18" necklaces that glint with "exotic" regional stones; the copywriter observes that "Phineas Fogg couldn't have rounded the world in 80 days if he had stopped to shop for souvenirs."

But the traveling man of Jules Verne's 1873 novel was named Phileas. Ya gotta do the lookin'.

Same problem, different medium: A Halloween card copywriter went on about "Ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night."

If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right. And here the research need go no further than Mr. Bartlett's 16th edition, p. 779:

"From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggety beasties

And things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us!"

Same department, different medium, problem's with the proofreading. Headline in the real-estate section, Boston newspaper: "Chiaforo's challenge." Lede's first sentence: "Can developer Don Chiofaro pull it off again?" Final sentence in the story: "Chofaro's company...." One name ... three spellings. Zero excuse.

* A Boston Globe story about volcano eruptions in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, on 15 Dec. 2003 led with "Deep inside the volcano's crater, a cauldron of scarlet lava spits, bubbles, and boils. Clouds of foul-smelling gas billow up and over the rocky rim."

Further down in the story, "The fiery river cut through the town as if through butter ... lava crawled across the airport's runway ... gutted the main cathedral.... "

The sixth graf proclaimed that scientists now warn "the feisty volcano could blow again at any time...."

Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate notes at feisty "full of nervous energy; fidgety ... touchy, quarrelsome. Exuberantly frisky ... having or showing a lively aggressiveness...spunky."

Here the writer needs a Krakatoic word ... feisty's a joke.

Alden Wood, professor emeritus at Simmons College, Boston, USA, writes and lectures on language usage.

He is a retired insurance industry vice president of advertising and public relations.

His e-dress is [e-mail].