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I was taught in honors eleventh-grade English that sentences couldn't start with pronouns. Our daily grammar lessons mostly consisted of taking sentences like "He went to the store" and changing them to "Bob went to the store." https://twitter.com/ByDCP/status/1263554868888760320
Of course, you'd never encounter a sentence like "He went to the store" without some sort of context, but that was beside the point. The point was that even with context, a pronoun supposedly had to have an antecedent within the same sentence.
And if you're wondering on why we changed an unknown "he" to Bob, congratulations on identifying another problem with this exercise. How can you fix an allegedly ungrammatical or unclear sentence if you don't know what it's supposed to mean?
But that part wasn't important. The important thing was that we no longer had a pronoun without an antecedent.
(A "she" without an antecedent was generally changed to Mary, by the way.)
(A "she" without an antecedent was generally changed to Mary, by the way.)
And yes, I've told this story before, but hearing that other people are being taught this nonsense made me mad all over again.
(I transferred out of that class halfway through the year, by the way. I was also taking creative writing, so I had another English credit.)
(I transferred out of that class halfway through the year, by the way. I was also taking creative writing, so I had another English credit.)
Ah, but "Ryan Godfrey" isn't an antecedent here because it comes AFTER the pronoun.
*gives Ryan an F on his grammar lesson* https://twitter.com/rgodfrey/status/1266085438311317504
*gives Ryan an F on his grammar lesson* https://twitter.com/rgodfrey/status/1266085438311317504
To all of you saying that you've never heard of such a rule, consider yourselves lucky. It is, unfortunately, the only bit of grammar I actually remember from that class.
(And yes, Jonathon just used a couple of pronouns without antecedents. Jonathon is in big trouble.)
(And yes, Jonathon just used a couple of pronouns without antecedents. Jonathon is in big trouble.)
