Friday, February 27, 2009

Criminal Sentence 177: Pronouns

From a book I'm reading (this occurs in the middle of a paragraph about a tour of a chapel):

"I fancied that there had once been a Catholic chaplain at Tysedale. Indeed, when he rejoined us the following day, (Mr.) Brockley poked about in the chapel..."

Pronouns refer back to nouns already mentioned, which is why I got confused when I got to "he" and then was presented with another male character, Mr. Brockley. The "he" incorrectly comes before what it refers to (called an "antecedent"), and as you know, "ante" often refers to "before," so the antecedent goes before the pronoun. To avoid confusion--and to be more grammatically correct--we need to rearrange the pronoun and the antecedent:

"I fancied that there had once been a Catholic chaplain at Tysedale. Indeed, when Mr. Brockley rejoined us the following day, he poked about in the chapel..."

So when you use a pronoun, make sure you have already mentioned what you're referring to.

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