Pronouns stand in for nouns. They are indispensable to concise communication. Without them, we would have a lot of long-winded sentences. For instance, let's say I stood in the front of a classroom of 26 students and, looking at one of them, Frankie, I said, "I'm talking to you." Assuming all 26 students had vision and were looking at me as I spoke, the entire class would know I was speaking not to them but only to Frankie, whose name I replaced with the personal pronoun you. Now let's say I spread my vision across all the students in the room when saying "I'm talking to you." In that case, you replaces all 26 students. Imagine how inconvenient it would be for me to say, "I'm talking to Alexandria, Bonita, Celia, Donna, Eda, Frankie, Gina, Hallie, Isadora, Jill, Kalyan, Li, Mohammed, Nick, Oscar, Paul, Quincy, Ronetta, Shirley, Tina, Ursula, Vinny, Wally, Xiomara, Yu, and Zhang." That's why I always express gratitude to the language gods for inventing pronouns.
Of course, pronouns have their problems too. What if I wrote this sentence:
Unclear: Bob said that Greg's data are reliable. He is incorrect. (Is Bob or Greg incorrect?)
Clearer: Bob showed that Greg's unreliable data are incorrect.
Clearer: Bob made an incorrect assessment by saying Greg's data are unreliable.
You can choose other ways to express the sentence, depending on what meaning you want to make. The point is that personal pronouns used carelessly can create ambiguity, so place them in their clearest context.
The first part of this series: Part 1: Grouping and Dropping Prepositional Phrases
Of course, pronouns have their problems too. What if I wrote this sentence:
Vice-president Sandra Schultz told Eva Barnes that she will present the quarterly report to the Board.We would have a hard time deciding who she is, because in the context of this sentence, she could be either woman. Yet we would know who's who if the sentence read:
Vice-president Sandra Schultz told Adam Barnes that she will present the quarterly report to the Board.We are clear because we would know Sandra to be a woman (she) and Adam to be a man. Here is another example of an unclear pronoun with improved edits.
Unclear: Bob said that Greg's data are reliable. He is incorrect. (Is Bob or Greg incorrect?)
Clearer: Bob showed that Greg's unreliable data are incorrect.
Clearer: Bob made an incorrect assessment by saying Greg's data are unreliable.
You can choose other ways to express the sentence, depending on what meaning you want to make. The point is that personal pronouns used carelessly can create ambiguity, so place them in their clearest context.
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