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Check it out: While animal shelters are necessary for abandoned animals, they are potentially deadly for older
dogs and cats that can’t find homes.
- While it intuitively makes sense that they refers to animal shelters, grammatically they
could possibly refer to animals, rendering the “they” ambiguous.
ETS loves to insert “it” and “they” into a couple of the answer choices of the sentence
correction problems. Visually skim through the answer choices. If you see “it” and “they”
in one or two of the answer choices, DO NOT pick one of those answers!
STAY AWAY FROM “IT” AND “THEY”!
Another clue that ETS is testing Pronoun Ambiguity is two same gender names
followed by a pronoun, such as “he” or “she.”
Let’s see how this works:
Shelly was afraid to tell Linda that Billy had called her.
- Who does the “her” refer to? Is Shelly afraid to say that Billy called her, meaning Shelly? Or
is Shelly afraid to say that Billy had called her, Linda? Maybe Linda and Billy just broke up
and Linda doesn’t want to hear from him. The “her” is ambiguous.
Rule #5: Pronoun Agreement ..................................................................
How to Find: Underlined Pronouns.
How to Fix: Make the pronoun agree in number with the noun it is referring to.
We’ve already discussed pronouns in terms of subject verb agreement (Chapter 3). Remember each, either,
neither, all the ones and bodys are singular; some, all, any, most, and none can be singular or plural; and who,
which, and that can be singular or plural.
Another note to remember is that collective nouns, such as the herd, the choir, the government, or any country,
such as France, are singular.
Below is a list of additional singular versus plural pronouns.
Singular Plural
he we
she they
it us
this them
that these