Pronoun Reference How and Where to use Pronoun References

What is Pronoun Reference?

One of the most common matter about pronoun reference is that pronou must always refer clearly to noun which they represent and we call this noun as antecedent. What is the uses of learning about pronoun reference? Learning and knowing about pronoun references will help you avoid confusion in your writing.

What is the ways of finding the antecedent?

It is worth remembering that pronouns always stand for nouns. So an antecedent is that noun or it can be a group of words acting as a noun. Let's look at the following exam.

Moroum called Nargis into her room and then she let her sit on the chair.

Thirst due to the scorching Sun has chocked Mariam and Nargis. They were exhausted since they had no chance to get pure drinking water.

The readers will face no difficulty in understanding the above sentences. In the first sentence, the reader knows clearly that who or what is being talked about. Her in the first sentence is Nargis. They in the second example refers to Mariam and Nargis.

What are Unclear antecedents or what are unclear pronounce references?

Sometimes anticedents may not be clear to the reader or it can be unclear pronoun reference for the readers. Let's look at the anticedents of  the pronoun.

The principal was speaking to Rabi, and he looked unhappy.

The readers may face problem in understanding who the person is, who looked unhappy in this sentence, weather the principal or Robi? The reader isn't sure about it. So here unclear antecedent or unclear pronounce reference is used. 

Sometimes we we can count on context or sometimes we use our common sense to figure out which pronoun goes with which antecedent. But it is true that not all readers have the same capability to understand the pronoun references if the pronoun reference is unclear. This kind of ambiguous pronounce reference will bring a lot of confusion and frustration to the readers.

This sort of mistakes or errors happen when we are writing about something. Now the question is how we can avoid this kind of unclear pronoun reference or unclear anticedents. This is the question that we have to solve now. We can solve this problem in many ways. One of the ways by which we can solve this problem is changing the sentence patterns or sentence structure. The second way is eliminating the pronoun and in its place we may place the noun or antecedent.

The principal was speaking to Rabi, and he looked unhappy. 

This can be corrected by this:

 The principle was speaking to Robi who looked unhappy.

Or

The principle was speaking to Robi and Robi looked unhappy.

We can correct sentences by making the sentence complex or adding sentence connectors like who, which, that. Another way of correcting the sentence is writing the noun instead of the pronoun. Or we can keep the pronoun at its place, then we can make a first bracket and in the bracket we can write the noun.

More Indefinite antecedents

More subtle errors occur when you use a pronoun reference that is too general or indefinite or one that only you know.

Readers may face more difficulty in understanding the context of the sentence when we use pronoun reference which is to general or indefinite or one that you know. Let's look at the example below.

I told Kamal, Rashid, and then Fahin, which infuriated Nasir.

Did my telling all the three people Kamal, Rashid, and then Fahin infuriated Nasir, or was it only telling Fahim? If we rewrite the sentence to make the meaning clear to the reader, it may be written like below.

First I told Kamal and Rashid. Then I told Fahim, which infuriated Nasir.

Let's look at another example.

Each player should follow their rules.

Here 'Their' is plural pronoun but the

Person is singular noun 'player'

If we clear the unclear pronoun reference,  the sentence will be written like this.

Each person should follow his or her dream.

Or, All players should follow their rules.

Video Pronoun Reference How and Where to use Pronoun References