Hi, folks! Thanks for joining me! Before we begin: if you’re here looking for information on nonbinary genders or how to use pronouns that you’re less familiar with, this isn’t the right blog post for you. Instead, allow me to recommend Scientific American’s article on why the gender binary has never been accurate, The New York Times’ article on neopronouns, or the Oxford English Dictionary’s blog post explaining the ~650-year history of singular “they.”

If you’re here to learn more about what ambiguous pronouns are and how to avoid them in your writing, let’s dive in.

A quick pronoun refresher

In case it’s been a little while since your last grammar course, pronouns are words that act as substitutes for a previously identified noun. Common pronouns include: she, he, they, we, us, I, you, it, etc. Pronouns allow us to speak and write without constantly repeating the same noun. Consider the following examples:

Sarah walked into the kitchen. She opened the fridge and then closed it, disappointed that it didn’t have anything she wanted to snack on.

Sarah walked into the kitchen. Sarah opened the fridge and then closed the fridge, disappointed that the fridge didn’t have anything Sarah wanted to snack on.

Pronouns: clearly useful at avoiding clunky sentences that repeat the word “fridge” three times in a row.

Pronouns can be singular, plural, or possessive.

Possessive pronouns are words like: my, your, our, his, her, their, its, etc. They indicate ownership, and we use them all the time.

Most pronouns are either singular (I, you, he, she, it) or plural (we, them, those). Some pronouns, however, can be both singular and plural. Historically, “you” was a plural pronoun and “thou” was the singular version. “You” has replaced “thou,” but it remains both singular and plural. When we address a crowd, we might say “Thank you for joining me,” clearly using “you” to refer to multiple people.

“They” can also be both singular or plural. (This is not up for discussion. It’s not new; see the link at the top of the post.) We use singular “they” all the time, regardless of someone’s gender identity. You might send a group text after a dinner party asking, “Did anyone leave their sweater here?” If someone dropped a wallet, you might try to find their ID to return it to them.

Singular “they” has replaced the extremely clunky “he or she”—or, even worse, “s/he”—in standard academic and nonfiction writing and is a clean and inclusive term for people of unspecified identities. It’s great; it’s a no-brainer; it’s grammatically correct, makes all our lives easier, and doesn’t leave anyone out.

What are ambiguous pronouns?

Now that we’re all caught up on pronoun basics, we can get to our topic of the week. Ambiguous pronouns in writings are pronouns (she, he, they, we, us, I, you, it, etc.) that have lost their clear connection to the nouns that they replace. This most frequently occurs when multiple people with the same pronoun are interacting.

Consider the following sentence:

He helped him climb over the wall, getting his shoelace caught in the process. 

The beginning of the sentence is clear: Person A is helping Person B get over the wall. The second part is where things get fuzzy: whose shoelace got caught, Person A or Person B?

Or consider the following, in which Noah tries to prevent a fight and singular “they” causes some confusion:

They jumped between them and their friends, preventing them from coming to blows.

Does “their friends” refer to Noah’s friends or to the group of people coming to start a fight? As the reader, it’s too hard to tell.

How can you fix ambiguous pronouns?

As an editor, the first thing I’ll do when I find an ambiguous pronoun is query the author. It’s not my place to make assumptions that might not be what an author meant, so if I’m ever unsure, I’ll ask. Once it’s clear whom each pronoun refers to, there are a few things we can do.

First, we can replace some pronouns with specific nouns to clear up the confusion. We can write: “Joey helped Simon climb over the wall, getting Simon’s shoelace caught in the process.” Sure, we’ve used “Simon” twice in one sentence, but it’s much clearer.

The second option is to recast the sentence. In our second example, writing “Noah jumped between the ballerinas and Noah’s friends, preventing the ballerinas and Noah’s friends from coming to blows” is clunky. By recasting, we can write: “Noah jumped between their friends and the ballerinas, preventing a fight from breaking out on the dancefloor.” In this version of the sentence, all identities are clear and we could still replace “Noah’s” with “their” to avoid a clunky sentence.

Does your writing have ambiguous pronouns?

Ambiguous pronouns can be hard to catch because we, as writers, know who we mean when we’re writing. This is why it’s important to have someone else read your writing before it gets published! Hiring an editor is a great way to ensure that your writing is clear and free of ambiguity. Get in touch today to make your writing the best it can be.

Molly Rookwood is an editor, reader, tea drinker, and cat mum in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She loves Jane Austen and epic fantasy, and her bookshelves are forever overburdened. When she’s not playing D&D or taking turns about the room, she can be reached at molly@rookwoodediting.com or by following @RookwoodEditing on Twitter.