A modifier is a word, phrase, or clause that modifies—that is, gives information about—another word in the same sentence. For example, in the following sentence, the word "burger" is modified by the word "vegetarian":
Example: I'm going to the Saturn Café for a vegetarian burger.
- The modifier "vegetarian" gives extra information about what kind of burger it is.
A modifier can be an adjective (a word that modifies a noun, like "burger"), but it can also be an adverb (a word that modifies a verb):
Example: The student carefully proofread her draft.
- The adverb "carefully" is the modifier in this example—it modifies the verb "proofread," giving important details about how the proofreading was conducted.
A modifier can even be a phrase or clause, as in the following example:
Example: She studied in the library.
- Here, the phrase "in the library" gives us extra information about the verb, "studied."
Modifiers can also be used for sentence variety. See this page on varying sentence structure for more information.
