Dangling Modifiers

As I read the NYT style manual editor, I quickly recognized the dangling modifiers in some of the sentences. A lot of times studying or preparing specifically for a test can be detrimental but in many cases some of the knowledge actually does stay in your mind. When practicing for the SAT, I usually didn't learn new things but rather became more proficient or faster in them. However, for the writing section I did have to learn some grammar rules because I often say or hear grammatically wrong things. Even if those mistakes don't really affect what I'm communicating and I usually correct them if I have time to go over my writing, I didn't want them to affect my chances of getting into a good college. Some of these grammar mistakes I usually did are dangling modifiers, but, hopefully, I've learned and stopped doing them. These are phrases that modify another thing or phrase that are not the ones that should be. The NYT article uses this example:

But on Saturday, traveling in Zabul Province in southern Afghanistan on a day trip to deliver books to schoolchildren, Ms. Smedinghoff’s promisewas cut short by a Taliban car bomb.

Although the idea is communicated, for the sake of clarity it is important to revise the sentence. Originally I learned the rules about dangling modifiers to identify them as mistakes in the SAT writing section but I think (or hope) that now I'm applying them to my writing. Tests can be a good way to learn.