4 ms·

>I have a side business for ACT/SAT prep. I teach English, and often have to remind students about sentence structure and word flow. For example, I can't say "M

>I have a side business for ACT/SAT prep. I teach English, and often have to remind students about sentence structure and word flow. For example, I can't say "My mom, my grandma, and I went to her favorite store" -- in that example, there is no clear way to know who "her" is. The Lord’s work. I deal with this issue at work all day long. I am lucky I had a high school English teacher who DRILLED into me the slogan “no pronouns without a clear, one-word antecedent.” That slogan is probably a top 2 mantra for me that has paid dividends in my communication skills. The other one would be “break long sentences into short ones.”

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago
It's crazy how often these simple rules are violated. Sometimes someone will tell a story to be that involves 3+ people, and they'll slowly switch to using pronouns instead of names. I feel a bit like a jerk for continually interrupting them to clarify, but only when they're unfazed and happy to provide the clarification do I realize that this is just how their conversations usually go.
- kbenson 3y ago
  Yes. I often feel like I'm being too pedantic when asking for clarification about who is doing what from people since I do it way more often than others, and honestly can't tell if I'm just not thinking hard enough about it to intuit the likely correct answer or most people just let it go much longer and eventually work it out from context or assume and risk being wrong.
droopyEyelids 3y ago
Pronouns are truly the bane of clear communication. I set this rule for my team so many times and it's awesome how much harder people have to think, and how much better the team works when people can't write a sentence like "It's not working right do you know if anything changed with it?"
- pixl97 3y ago
  Me: "What's the problem" Them: "You know, the thing with the thing"
gjm11 3y ago
Am I misunderstanding "one-word" here? So far as I can see there's nothing wrong with the pronoun use in these, all of which have more-than-one-word antecedents: "The last-but-one president of the United States met today with his former press secretary." "My favourite blues singer stubbed her toe." "That wretched web browser I hate is updating itself again."
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  I don't know the grammar terminology (ESL, and all), but AIUI, in your examples, the one-word antecedent would be, in order, "president" and "singer". What I do understand though is the wider point: ambiguous sentences are a pain for AI and humans alike; if you use a pronoun, make sure there is exactly one candidate it could refer to.
- nl 3y ago
  "one word antecedents" means that the pronoun can refer to a single word (and only one). So in "The last-but-one president of the United States met today with his former press secretary." we see "his" refers to [the] "president". A counter example would be: "The last-but-one president of the United States and his partner met today with their former press secretary." In this case "their" could refer to to the president, his partner or the collective of the president and his partner.
  - gjm11 3y ago
    This seems like an odd use of language to me -- the pronoun refers back to a particular thing, not a particular word, and the thing that's needed for clarity and definiteness is that there should be one thing, not one word. Consider: "The puzzle contained one red herring; it led a few solvers to waste some time." (Antecedent is "red herring"; a red herring is not actually a herring and it doesn't make much sense to say that what the pronoun refers back to is "herring".) "The puzzle contained three red herrings, of which the last but one was particularly liable to confuse; it caught out many solvers." (Antecedent is "the last but one [of the three red herrings]"; if you had to pick out a single word it would have to be either "herrings", which is plural, or "last", which is Just Plain Wrong.) "Mary went through the list of candidates to find the most suitable for the job. She sent him an email containing a job offer." (Antecedent is "the most suitable for the job". No single word will do.) I'm guessing that "one-word antecedent" is US educational jargon. I don't like it.

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago

It's crazy how often these simple rules are violated. Sometimes someone will tell a story to be that involves 3+ people, and they'll slowly switch to using pronouns instead of names. I feel a bit like a jerk for continually interrupting them to clarify, but only when they're unfazed and happy to provide the clarification do I realize that this is just how their conversations usually go.

kbenson 3y ago
Yes. I often feel like I'm being too pedantic when asking for clarification about who is doing what from people since I do it way more often than others, and honestly can't tell if I'm just not thinking hard enough about it to intuit the likely correct answer or most people just let it go much longer and eventually work it out from context or assume and risk being wrong.

droopyEyelids 3y ago

Pronouns are truly the bane of clear communication. I set this rule for my team so many times and it's awesome how much harder people have to think, and how much better the team works when people can't write a sentence like "It's not working right do you know if anything changed with it?"

pixl97 3y ago
Me: "What's the problem" Them: "You know, the thing with the thing"

gjm11 3y ago

Am I misunderstanding "one-word" here? So far as I can see there's nothing wrong with the pronoun use in these, all of which have more-than-one-word antecedents: "The last-but-one president of the United States met today with his former press secretary." "My favourite blues singer stubbed her toe." "That wretched web browser I hate is updating itself again."

TeMPOraL 3y ago
I don't know the grammar terminology (ESL, and all), but AIUI, in your examples, the one-word antecedent would be, in order, "president" and "singer". What I do understand though is the wider point: ambiguous sentences are a pain for AI and humans alike; if you use a pronoun, make sure there is exactly one candidate it could refer to.
nl 3y ago
"one word antecedents" means that the pronoun can refer to a single word (and only one). So in "The last-but-one president of the United States met today with his former press secretary." we see "his" refers to [the] "president". A counter example would be: "The last-but-one president of the United States and his partner met today with their former press secretary." In this case "their" could refer to to the president, his partner or the collective of the president and his partner.
- gjm11 3y ago
  This seems like an odd use of language to me -- the pronoun refers back to a particular thing, not a particular word, and the thing that's needed for clarity and definiteness is that there should be one thing, not one word. Consider: "The puzzle contained one red herring; it led a few solvers to waste some time." (Antecedent is "red herring"; a red herring is not actually a herring and it doesn't make much sense to say that what the pronoun refers back to is "herring".) "The puzzle contained three red herrings, of which the last but one was particularly liable to confuse; it caught out many solvers." (Antecedent is "the last but one [of the three red herrings]"; if you had to pick out a single word it would have to be either "herrings", which is plural, or "last", which is Just Plain Wrong.) "Mary went through the list of candidates to find the most suitable for the job. She sent him an email containing a job offer." (Antecedent is "the most suitable for the job". No single word will do.) I'm guessing that "one-word antecedent" is US educational jargon. I don't like it.