Question

Many arts, including literature, painting, fiction, poetry, and theater, made the Harlem Renaissance special, but music holds a special place in the history of the period. African American artists developed new styles of music such as jazz. Featuring a new style of piano playing, the people who went to hear this new jazz sound thought it was a refreshing take on an old sound. Jazz began to attract many new music fans to African American clubs, where African Americans gathered to hear the new sound. If the featured pianist played well, then the music was good and more and more people began to listen to jazz.

What kinds of errors does this paragraph contain? Check all of the boxes that apply.

Capitalization errors

Dangling modifiers

Misplaced modifiers

Redundancies

Subject-verb disagreements

Troublesome modifiers

Wordiness

Answer 1

Select: Dangling modifiers; Redundancies; Wordiness.

Brief reasons/examples:
- Dangling modifiers: “Featuring a new style of piano playing, the people who went to hear this new jazz sound…” — the participial phrase is meant to modify the pianist, not “the people,” so it’s dangling.
- Redundancies: repeated ideas/words — e.g., “special” twice in the first sentence, “new jazz sound” / “the new sound,” “African American clubs, where African Americans gathered,” and overlapping items in the arts list (fiction/literature).
- Wordiness: sentences are repetitive and could be tightened (multiple instances of “new,” repeated references to the same idea, and extra clauses that add little).

Not checked:
- Capitalization errors: capitalization is fine (proper nouns and sentence starts).
- Subject-verb disagreements: verbs agree with their subjects.
- Misplaced modifiers: the main modifier problem is the dangling participial phrase (covered above) rather than a simple misplaced modifier.
- Troublesome modifiers: no problematic words like only/just/merely used in a misleading way.