Confusing references make story a 'Pooh-dunit'

May I Have a Word?
Published Friday, January 25, 2002

Every once in a while, I like to take a much-needed break from worrying about grammar and usage by reading to my 5-year-old daughter. Let's see, here's a pleasant book about Winnie the Pooh:

After reading only a few moments, I encounter this sentence: "'A fine day for playing Poohsticks!' Pooh said to Piglet as he picked up a small branch."

Uh-oh. Who's picking up the branch, Pooh or Piglet?

"Daddy, why are you stopping?" my daughter asks. Mumbling something about this book's turning into a "Poohdunit," I continue reading.

The author of this book has stepped, however adorably, into a swamp of grammatical malfeasance called "ambiguous pronoun reference." This occurs when a pronoun could refer to either one of two antecedents, leaving the reader unsure which antecedent is intended.

Who, for instance, is crying in this sentence?: "When Christopher Robin told Pooh the honey was gone, he started to cry." Eliminate the ambiguity by rewording it, "Pooh started crying when Christopher Robin told him the honey was gone."

Before you pooh-pooh such errors as childish mistakes, consider the sentence Doris Shapiro of West Hartford, Conn., spotted in Newsweek magazine: "A Texas jury last year awarded $83 million, later reduced to $55 million, to the family of an 84-year-old woman who claimed she died because of an untreated bedsore." Because it's not clear that the "who" refers to "the family," it sounds as if the dead woman was giving the reason for her own death -- a neat trick.

Now see whether you can detect and correct the ambiguous pronoun references in these sentences:

1) Funklebean asked Hicklebottom to repair the sump pump because he knew how serious the problem was.

2) Place your hand on the two-by-four and then cut it off.

3) After Horace told Horatio about the missing money, he felt guilty.

4) The cannibals showed the tourists the bananas and then ate them.

5) Jane told the teacher she had misunderstood Frost's poem.

6) Let's take the knives and forks out of the drawers and clean them.

7) The veterinarian discovered the cat's problem and then fixed it.

8) If you have a cinder in your eye, pluck it out.


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