Another Deadly Sins Recap

Did you think there were really only seven deadly sins of scientific writing? There are a few more. Here’s Rick Hull on ambiguous pronouns.

Pronouns (like this, that, these, those, it, and they) are stand-ins for nouns—they help you cut down on unnecessary repetition. Ambiguous pronouns occur when a pronoun makes a solo appearance at the beginning of a sentence or clause. When a pronoun like this or it starts a sentence or clause, it could refer to any one of the preceding nouns that agree with it in number.

In fact, I’ve just given you a good example of an ambiguous pronoun. In the final sentence of that last paragraph, the second it could refer to clause, sentence, beginning, appearance, it, this, and pronoun. As I explained in Deadly Sin #6, that pronoun will tend to modify the nearest candidate, clause. So, what should you do? Replace it with that pronoun.