{"id":258,"date":"2011-05-19T16:12:13","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T23:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/e-gmat.com\/blogs\/?p=258"},"modified":"2022-11-23T17:46:07","modified_gmt":"2022-11-23T12:16:07","slug":"pronoun-errors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/e-gmat.com\/blogs\/pronoun-errors\/","title":{"rendered":"Pronoun Errors"},"content":{"rendered":"<span class=\"rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">A <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\">2<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">min read <\/span><\/span><p>GMAT introduces two kinds of pronoun errors:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Pronoun Reference Errors<\/li>\n<li>Pronoun \u2013Antecedent Agreement Errors<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h2>Pronoun Reference Error<\/h2>\n<p>As we saw in this post, pronouns are used in place of nouns to make the sentence more readable and clearly communicate the meaning of the sentence.\u00a0 This implies that when the reader reads a sentence that uses pronouns, he\/she must be able to clearly understand what or who this pronoun refers to.\u00a0 If there is any ambiguity in this reference, then the sentence has pronoun reference error.\u00a0 For example:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em><strong><span style=\"color: #800080;\">Mary <\/span><\/strong>and <strong><span style=\"color: #800080;\">Susie <\/span><\/strong>run a cooking show in which <strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">she <\/span><\/strong>primarily does the cooking and <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>she <\/strong><\/span>does the narration.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">The pronouns are shaded as shown.\u00a0 Clearly, after reading the sentence, one cannot tell who does the cooking and who does the narration.\u00a0 Thus, this sentence has pronoun reference error.\u00a0 This can be corrected by replacing the pronouns altogether.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em><strong><span style=\"color: #800080;\">Mary <\/span><\/strong>and <strong><span style=\"color: #800080;\">Susie <\/span><\/strong>run a cooking show in which <span style=\"color: #800080;\"><strong>Mary <\/strong><\/span>primarily does the cooking and <span style=\"color: #800080;\"><strong>Susie <\/strong><\/span>does the narration.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>But now consider the sentence as shown below.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em><strong><span style=\"color: #800080;\">Mary <\/span><\/strong>and <strong><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Tom <\/span><\/strong>run a cooking show in which <strong><span style=\"color: #800080;\">she <\/span><\/strong>primarily does the cooking and <strong><span style=\"color: #008000;\">he<\/span><\/strong> does the narration.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">In the above sentence, since the gender of the two subjects is different, there is no ambiguity in pronoun reference.\u00a0 It is obvious that Mary does the cooking and Tom does the narration.\u00a0 Thus, this sentence is correct as is.<\/p>\n<h2>Pronoun Antecedent Agreement Errors<\/h2>\n<p>Apart from pronoun reference being clear, the pronoun and the noun that it refers to should agree in number.\u00a0 That is, if the noun that the pronoun refers to is singular, then the pronoun should also be singular.\u00a0 If the noun that the pronoun refers to is plural, then the pronoun should also be plural.\u00a0 For example:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>Even though the <strong><span style=\"color: #008000;\">team <\/span><\/strong>had practiced very hard, <strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">they <\/span><\/strong>lost the game by a huge margin.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">In this sentence, it is very clear that \u201cthey\u201d refers to \u201cteam\u201d.\u00a0 So there is no pronoun reference error.\u00a0 However, since team is a collective noun, it is singular and this pronoun-antecedent pair does not agree in number.\u00a0 This can be corrected by changing \u201cthey\u201d to \u201cit\u201d.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>Even though the <strong><span style=\"color: #008000;\">team <\/span><\/strong>had practiced very hard, <strong><span style=\"color: #008000;\">it <\/span><\/strong>lost the game by a huge margin.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In order to detect pronoun errors, we suggest following approach:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Understand the meaning of the sentence.<\/li>\n<li>Divide the sentence into its individual clauses.<\/li>\n<li>Identify the pronouns and determine the possible antecedents.<\/li>\n<li>Determine if there is any ambiguity in the use of pronoun.<\/li>\n<li>Ensure that pronoun and antecedent agree in number.<\/li>\n<li>Be cognizant of the nouns that are always singular.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>The above is covered comprehensively in the following concepts<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Pronouns (available in free trial for registered <a href=\"https:\/\/resources.e-gmat.com\/sign-up-free-trial\" data-wpel-link=\"external\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener noreferrer\">e-GMAT<\/a> users)<br \/>\nAlways Singular Subjects<\/p>\n<p>In addition, read <a href=\"http:\/\/e-gmat.com\/blogs\/?p=261 \" data-wpel-link=\"internal\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">this<\/a> post for more details on pronoun reference error as tested on GMAT.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GMAT introduces two kinds of pronoun errors: Pronoun Reference Errors Pronoun \u2013Antecedent Agreement Errors Pronoun Reference Error As we saw in this post, pronouns are used in place of nouns to make the sentence more readable and clearly communicate the meaning of the sentence.\u00a0 This implies that when the reader reads a sentence that uses [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ub_ctt_via":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"e-GMAT","author_link":"https:\/\/e-gmat.com\/blogs\/author\/administrator\/"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v17.1.1 (Yoast SEO v17.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Pronoun Errors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/e-gmat.com\/blogs\/pronoun-errors\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pronoun Errors\" \/>\n<meta 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