41h Revising ambiguous pronoun references

41hRevising ambiguous pronoun references

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Quick Help: Editing for clear pronoun reference

If a pronoun can refer to more than one antecedent, revise the sentence to make the meaning clear.

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What fell into the water—the car or the bridge? The revision makes the meaning clear by replacing the pronoun it with the bridge.

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Reporting Kerry’s words directly, in quotation marks, eliminates the ambiguity.

If a pronoun and its antecedent are too far apart, you may need to replace the pronoun with the appropriate noun.

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In the original, the pronoun it is too far away from the antecedent zygote in the first sentence, thus making the second sentence unclear to readers.