(Easily accessible) by road, rail, and water transport, the board of directors chose the city of Metz as the site of the company’s distribution center.
The answer is D. Wouldn’t it be a dangling modifier? can someone explain to me if there are exceptions to that rule or what is going on? I was surprised to see that this question was from the May 2013 SAT.
How is it dangling? The object doesn’t have to be immediately after the comma, just present in the sentence.
A useful trick is to reverse the clauses and see if the sentence makes sense. “the board of directors chose the city of Metz as the site of the company’s distribution center because it is easily accessible by road, rail, and water transport.”
In its original form, the sentence has a misplaced modifier (the initial phrase modifies “board of directors” instead of “Metz”). Option (D) changes the modification to the correct noun, making the sentence correct.