Mind your Pronouns!

Pronoun Clarity

What is pronoun clarity?

Pronoun clarity is the idea that a pronoun must clearly refer to a logical antecedent.

An antecedent is the noun that a pronoun replaces.

What's on the test?

On both the SAT and ACT, you will likely be asked to identify the following pronoun clarity errors:

• Multiple possible antecedents: If multiple nouns in the sentence agree with a pronoun in number, it may not be clear which noun the pronoun refers to.

• No possible antecedents: If no nouns in a sentence agree with a pronoun in number, then the pronoun may be unclear.

Tips and strategies

Expert tip: Find the antecedent

• To recognize pronoun clarity errors, we must be able to identify the antecedent of the pronouns in question.

• Ask yourself: what noun is this pronoun logically replacing?

• If you find multiple possible antecedents, or if you find no possible antecedents, then you’ve found a pronoun clarity error.

Expert tip: Be specific

Pronoun clarity errors often show up in questions that ask you to revise the underlined portion of a sentence.

The easiest way to fix an error like this is usually to replace the unclear pronoun with the specific noun it was meant to represent.

Expert tip: Fix the common flaw

Flawed pronoun clarity is a very common error type. If it is present, forget anything else that might seem weird to you about the sentence—the choice that fixes the common flaw will be the answer.