Dr. Richard Nordquist is professor emeritus of rhetoric and English at Georgia Southern University and the author of several university-level grammar and composition textbooks. Improve your language arts knowledge with free questions in "Identify vague pronoun references" and thousands of other language arts skills. Ambiguous Pronoun Reference A pronoun with multiple, possible antecedents. It, this, and which are pronouns, and they need to refer back to a specific noun, not to the whole idea of a previous statement. Eliminate a vague pronoun reference by the following methods: a) Recast the sentence to eliminate the pronoun. A_____ When Pearl Buck was forty, her novel The Good Earth won the Pulitzer Prize. The pronoun reference is faulty here because the pronoun it has two antecedents. A pronoun is a part of speech that can replace a noun; its antecedent is the person, place, or thing to which the pronoun refers. Vague Pronoun Reference A pronoun without a specific antecedent. Example: Vague: The profits from the investment would be large, which I realized almost immediately. Vague Pronouns Each sentence below contains a vague pronoun reference. b) Supply a specific antecedent for the pronoun. As a result, the reader cannot know for sure whether Kara sold the disk or the cabinet. By using ThoughtCo, you accept our, Definiton and Examples of Faulty Pronoun Reference, Definition and Examples of Agreement in English Grammar, Personal Pronoun Definition and Examples in English, Definition and Examples of Pronoun Agreement, 100 Key Terms Used in the Study of Grammar, Definition and Examples of Referents in English Grammar, Definition and Examples of "Exophora" in English Grammar, Editing Exercise: Correcting Errors in Pronoun Reference, Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia, M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester, B.A., English, State University of New York. Pronouns must avoid being vague in what they reference: There are two common problems with vague pronouns. 1. A pronoun may point back to other items in a text (anaphoric reference) or—less commonly—point ahead to a later part of the text (cataphoric reference). After the teacher gave Susan the paper, she walked away angrily. In traditional grammar, a construction in which a pronoun doesn't refer clearly and unambiguously to its antecedent is called faulty pronoun reference. "They decided to do, "If a baby does not thrive on raw milk, boil, "John Roberts once defended a serial murderer before he became chief justice of the Supreme Court.". Exercise on Vague or Unclear Pronoun Reference In the following pairs of sentences, one sentence is correct, and the other sentence contains a vague or ambiguous pronoun reference. In these three sentences, the pronouns refer to the idea that Harry was always late, but they can’t logically refer back to … 'I think it's going to clear,' she said. The pronoun it does not have a clear noun antecedent. "An engaged woman is always more agreeable than a disengaged. Avoiding Vague and Ambiguous Pronoun References VOCABULARY Antecedent The noun which a pronoun substitutes for or refers to. "The school board had to decide whether to spend $186,000 to sponsor permanent residency for the foreign teachers or let them go back to the Philippines and start the search all over again. In English grammar, reference is the relationship between a grammatical unit (usually a pronoun) that refers to (or stands in for) another grammatical unit (usually a noun or noun phrase). The noun or noun phrase that a pronoun refers to is called the antecedent. The other occurs when a pronoun used refers to a word that is implied but not specifically stated. That problem is vague pronoun reference. In general, a pronoun should refer to a particular word in the preceding sentence. "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality. ThoughtCo uses cookies to provide you with a great user experience. 1. Such errors, called FAULTY or VAGUE PRONOUN REFERENCE, can confuse readers and obscure the intended meaning. In traditional grammar, a construction in which a pronoun doesn't refer clearly and unambiguously to its antecedent is called faulty pronoun reference.