This week, I really began to question myself as a writer. Basically, I learned that I had been doing something wrong my entire life—my relative pronouns often make broad references, which is grammatically incorrect. Example:
Hitler invaded Poland. This showed that a war would soon begin.
This sentence is incorrect. “This” is referring back to the broad idea of Hitler invading Poland, not one noun specifically. The sentence would be correct if I said: “This action showed that a war would soon begin.”
I think that this rule is rather hard to follow, and it seems a like a lot of students make this error in their writing. Even as I write this now, I feel as though I’m trying to be extra careful to not use it wrong! (And I think that I just made a mistake right there, by saying “to not use it wrong.” What is it referring to?) Honestly, I’m not so sure that I like this rule. IF PEOPLE CAN UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU’RE REFERRING TO, THEN I think that it should be okay to write it this way. This is where the differences between oral and written discourse come into play. We can say it wrong all the time and it is okay, but it is when you are actually writing it in a formal paper that it is important to be correct. This leads me to my question.
QUESTION: I know that grammar trends over time, and it seems like it usually trends towards becoming less and less formal. Is there much point in ever teaching the rule I just mentioned if we think that grammar will trend toward it not even being a rule anymore?
well, I'd say what you teach is a matter of priorities. Broad-reference THIS is a low-priority item. You're probably going to have lots of other things to do instead!
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, this concept is really pretty easy to teach. Just telling students to check THIS when starting a sentence to make sure it has a noun it's referring to. And/or tell them to put a noun after it. [if you do that with this blog, you'll find one or two, I think.]
No, I don't think this one is going to go away in your lifetime even. At college level and in professional writing on the job, writers really do need to be mindful of broad-reference THIS and WHICH.