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Which Noun Are You Modifying?

Original Post - 26 Jan 2025 - Michael H. Scott

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Thanks to Google Scholar citation alerts, I see all the published articles that cite OpenSees. Most of the titles make no sense and on the rare occasion that a title looks interesting, I’ll click the link and read the abstract.

Today’s citation alert delivered to my inbox an article whose title stood out, not for its content, but for its unclear meaning:

Seismic performance of steel frames under mainshock-aftershock sequences with buckling-restrained braces

To protect the innocent, I changed the structural system and structural component to be steel frames and BRBs, respectively, but preserved the grammatical structure of the original title.

The problem with this title is that “under mainshock-aftershock sequences” comes in between “steel frames” and “with buckling-restrained braces”, making it unclear who has the BRBs. Is it the steel frames or is it the mainshock-aftershock sequences? Like many titles, the wording is borderline garden-path.

A better title would put the steel frames and BRBs together:

Seismic performance of steel frames with buckling-restrained braces under mainshock-aftershock sequences

But this title remains unclear as to what “under mainshock-aftershock” refers to. Is it the seismic performance or the steel frames with BRBs? So, we could make one more tweak to the title:

Mainshock-aftershock seismic performance of steel frames with buckling-restrained braces

This title is more clear than the original because the nouns and their modifiers are next to each other, instead of separated by other nouns and other modifiers. “Mainshock-aftershock” is with “seismic” and “BRBs” is with “steel frames”. The pattern is AABB instead of the original ABAB pattern or the ABBA pattern of the first modification I made to the title.