Vocabulary 4000 - Noel's ESL eBook Library

Idiom & Usage 119
Reference
• A pronoun should be plural when it refers to two nouns joined
by and.
Example:
Jane and Katarina believe they passed the final exam.
The plural pronoun they refers to the compound subject Jane
and Katarina.
• A pronoun should be singular when it refers to two nouns joined
by or or nor.
Faulty Usage
Neither Jane nor Katarina believes they passed
the final.
Correct
Neither Jane nor Katarina believes she passed the final.
• A pronoun should refer to one and only one noun or compound
noun.
This is probably the most common pronoun error. If a pronoun
follows two nouns, it is often unclear which of the nouns the
pronoun refers to.
Faulty Usage
The breakup of the Soviet Union has left nuclear
weapons in the hands of unstable, nascent
countries. It is imperative to world security that
they be destroyed.
Although one is unlikely to take the sentence to mean that the
countries must be destroyed, that interpretation is possible from
the structure of the sentence. It is easily corrected:
The breakup of the Soviet Union has left nuclear
weapons in the hands of unstable, nascent
countries. It is imperative to world security that
these weapons be destroyed.