A colleague of mine used to collect examples of the “dangler” — “a word or phrase that’s in the wrong place at the wrong time”, as Patricia T O’Conner, former editor of the New York Times Book Review, once put it. She offered a couple of great examples: “Born at the age of 43, the baby was a great comfort to Mrs Wooster”; and “Tail wagging merrily, Bertie took the dog for a walk.”

Danglers seem to be becoming increasingly common. There were a couple of horrors, one right after the other, in an Evening Standard story today about the British bride, Anni Dewani, who was murdered when she and her husband, Shrien, were attacked and robbed on honeymoon in South Africa:

“But within three minutes of leaving the motorway, two gunmen hijacked the taxi. After robbing them both, Mr Dewani was thrown out of the people carrier’s back window. ”

As the Standard has it, it was the gunmen, rather than the honeymoon couple in their taxi, who left the motorway — and it was Mr Dewani who robbed the gunmen.