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Q&A Ambiguous sentences: How to tell when they need fixing?

If the object pronoun, ‘her’ in this case, doesn’t have a clear antecedent then the sentence will be ambiguous. By convention, the object pronoun is associated with the nearest object noun. Ther...

posted 5y ago by EDL‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T12:26:44Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/46592
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar EDL‭ · 2019-12-08T12:26:44Z (almost 5 years ago)
If the object pronoun, ‘her’ in this case, doesn’t have a clear antecedent then the sentence will be ambiguous.

By convention, the object pronoun is associated with the nearest object noun. There are exceptions since this is English and rules are only suggestions for the most part.

The first occurrence of ‘her’ is potentially ambiguous since there isn’t a clear object noun to link it to. If there were more people present, and some of them were sisters then you wouldn’t whose sister it referred to.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2019-07-13T15:45:57Z (over 5 years ago)
Original score: 1