Wrong Pronouns

By Ranjana S.

Why can't we say: If your child abhors spinach, try boiling it in milk..... :)

The pro- in pronoun means " in place of " Hence, every pronoun stands in place of a noun; the meaning of a sentence with a pronoun in it is clear only when there is no doubt in the reader's mind about which noun the pronoun stands for. If you use a pronoun that might possibly refer to any one of the two or more people, places, or things, your reader is bewildered and misunderstands the content.

In the aforementioned sentence; the reader might get puzzled that in case you have an obdurate child, who refuses to eat spinach, should you boil the child or spinach?

Image Source: internet

Look at this sentence- "Weats was the first to tell Charlie that he had been fired."

Within an English sentence the order of words is very important for getting the meaning across and making sense, exemplary writers usually try to place pronouns very close to their antecedents. Likewise, the readers assume that the nearest noun preceding a pronoun is the one it refers to. In this illustration, we would take it for granted that the noun represented by 'he' in the above sentence is Charlie, and that Charlie was the one who lost his job. However, any reader might wonder:

Is it possible that the writer intends the 'he' to refer back to Weats instead of Charlie?

To elucidate the meaning, the writer should have made it explicit in this way-

" Weats was the first to tell Charlie that Charlie had been fired."

Therefore, it is a good idea to repeat the noun than to leave the reader scratching his /her head.

Let's look at these illustrations:

• If your child abhors spinach, try boiling the spinach in milk.
• Since the cats seem scared of the dogs, we should get rid of the dogs.
• Marie went to visit Amanada because Amanda was feeling depressed.

Happy Learning!