“She”, a plural pronoun, is used in the sentence to refer to “the mongoose”, a subject in the singular. So”he” should be changed to “he.” Indefinite pronouns, a special class of words, will often be precursors. Some indefinite pronouns are always singular, despite the illogical. Pronoun reference errors can also be problems for novice writers, as it`s so easy to rush while writing and forget that you need to think about the clarity of your writing for your audience. In this sentence, the subject is “everyone”, a singular pronoun. Therefore, all pronouns that refer to “everyone” should be singular. In the underlined part of the sentence, “prepare a plan to adhere to”, “they” are in the plural and not in the singular. Now that we have identified the problem, we need to figure out how to solve it. Here are some examples of pronouns that would suit some precursors: In mathematics, 1 + 1 = 2.
This rule also applies to the matching of pronouns. If you have 1 singular noun + 1 singular noun, then together they are equal to 2 things, so a plural preceded it. It should be clear who or what the pronoun represents. If you have a sentence in which the precursor of the pronoun is unclear, your reader will probably be confused. Let`s take the following example: In addition, authors can often avoid the problem of neutral singular pronouns by revising a sentence to make the subject plural: in case of doubt, it is always prudent to choose a plural subject so that the pronoun circulates more easily (and is correct in number according to all style guides). Recently, many academic and popular publications have begun to accept the use of the pronoun “they” as a singular pronoun, meaning that writers use “them” to correspond to singular subjects in order to avoid gendered pronouns. Although the pronoun “she” is only a plural pronoun in some style guides, the APA encourages authors to use “they” as singular or plural pronouns with the specific intention of taking into account gender diversity. English unfortunately contains special agreement situations. These require your more careful attention. The general rule for pairing pronouns is simple: a single precursor requires a singular pronoun; a plural precursor needs a plural pronoun.
Another group of indefinite pronouns is singular or plural, depending on the information in the following prepositional sentence. The pronoun refers to employees, so the pronoun must be in the plural and not in the singular he or she. A common pronoun matching error occurs when an author uses a singular noun, such as Student, to represent students in general. Later, the writer may use them as pronouns to replace students because the writer means students in general. This often happens when people try to avoid this structure and use cumbersome word choices such as he/she, he or she, or (where) men, as there is no neutral singular pronoun in the English language. Using these variations is not preferable, and rewriting the sentence is a better option. Not only the homemade sweet potato cake, but also the hand-picked flowers will win Briana`s heart with her thoughtfulness. (NOTE that you have two precursors, the homemade sweet potato cake and the hand-picked flowers. Use the closer of the two precursors to determine whether you need a singular or plural pronoun.) The original text contains a pronoun reference error.
The precursor of “sound” is “empires”, which is plural. We should therefore use the plural possessive pronoun “her” instead of the singular possessive pronoun “its”. Only the choice of the answer “is that they have become too big for their governments to collect tax revenues from citizens” correctly uses the plural possive pronoun. Since “everyone” is gender-neutral, the best way to improve this phrase is to avoid using a gendered pronoun (which means “he” or “she”) and simply avoid using a pronoun. The correct answer, “prepare a plan and stick to it,” achieves this goal and is therefore the best way to improve the sentence. Whenever a sentence refers to a person of the unknown sex and a possessive pronoun in the singular is required to designate that person, the male and female possessive pronoun is usually included in the phrase “his or her”. In this case, “her or she” is a better choice than “she” because “student” is a singular noun and “she”,” which is a plural pronoun, does not match in number. Given the other possible answers, “she” is the contraction of “they are”, which would not make sense in the sentence, “it is” is the contraction of “it is”, which would not make sense in the sentence either, and “his” is the possessive form of the pronoun “he”, which is not used to refer to a person. So none of these answers can be correct.
Problems with pronoun matching and pronoun references are common struggles for many novice authors, but these problems are easy to correct once you recognize the problem and only pay close attention to the pronouns you use in your writing. Plural pronouns are logical choices for Woodpecker + Mate and Cheerleader + Baton Twirler respectively. The original text “the person who has most changed the world through his charitable actions or scientific discoveries” and the choice of the answer “the person who has changed the world most significantly through his charitable actions or scientific discoveries” contain errors in pronoun correspondence because they mistakenly use the plural pronoun “their” to designate the singular noun “person”. How you rewrite the sentence depends on the style guide you use. The 8th edition of the MLA and the 7th edition of the APA support the use of the singular. On the other hand, the 17th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) does not support the use of the singular in formal fonts unless the person in question prefers them. CMOS recommends rewriting the sentence so that the noun and pronoun match. However, if the members of the group act as individuals – each person assumes separate responsibilities or actions – then the collective noun is plural and requires plural pronouns for the agreement. Remember to find the true subject of the sentence to determine whether the pronoun should be singular or plural. Visit our Subject-Verb Match website to learn more about singular and plural topics. The plural pronouns they and them are logical and friendly choices for the teacher + assistant and the coach + trainer in both examples.
Walden University prides itself on being an inclusive institution that serves a diverse population of students. Walden is committed to expanding the university`s understanding of inclusion and diversity, and will now accept neutral pronouns in students` writings. This practice recognizes the APA`s recent approval of the singular “they” and also includes alternative pronouns currently in circulation (e.g. B, the nominatives xe, ve, ze /zir, ey and zhe and the derivatives associated with them). Walden acknowledges that the discussion on gender identity is ongoing. Therefore, the university accepts any pronoun in students` writing as long as it can be proven that it is accepted as a respectful term by the community it represents. When people speak, logic wins, so you`ll hear plural pronouns with those words. But when you write, words like everyone else, someone and nothing are singular and require a singular pronoun to match. The purpose of a pronoun is to take the place or use of a noun in a sentence.
Just like subjects and verbs, nouns and pronouns in a sentence must match in number. Note that it is clear what is the precursor of each of the pronouns: they (the student), they (the student), it (the paper). Here`s a simple example to give you an idea of what a pronoun reference error looks like: You want to be careful with your writing and make sure you`re clear and correct with your pronouns. Most of the time, when you slow down and work on a thorough editing, issues like this are discovered that can be easily fixed. The original sentence contains an error in the noun-pronoun correspondence: the plural possessive pronoun “her” is used to designate “the worker”, a noun in the singular. We must use a singular possessive pronoun to refer to a singular noun, and our choices in this case are “to be,” “they,” and “to be.” “Being” is not used to refer to people, and although “the worker” is not a gendered noun, we can say that the worker described in the sentence is masculine because the possessive pronoun uses “to be” in the expressions “his lost green helmet” and “made his return happy”. For the sentence to be correct, we need to replace “their” with “sound”, so the correct answer is: “Just when he had finished the work for the day, the worker found his lost green helmet and went home happy.” It is important to assign pronouns to their precursors in terms of gender and number. For example, if your pronoun is “it,” it shouldn`t refer to its predecessor, “Molly.” “Molly” is a person, so the best pronoun is “she.” The following information can help you choose the right pronoun. Who is she in this example? It`s unclear if it`s Sarah or Shawna. .