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Is there a Pronoun error in this sentence ?

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thekidreturns
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Is there a Pronoun error in this sentence ? [#permalink] New post   24 Oct 2012, 00:21
Ive started reading the WSJ on the advise of many high scorers

Heres a sentence that I encountered and would like to know if a propnoun error exists in the underlined portion.
If not, please explain to me why this is correct.

"In Monday night's debate, Mr. Romney softened earlier attacks on China and the president's handling of uprisings in the Arab world, blurred differences on Afghanistan and highlighted their mutual support of continued drone strikes on suspected terrorists."

The pronoun "their" should refer to a plural noun and there seems to be no noun other than "Mr. Romney" who could've supported drone strikes.

Is this an error ? Should I continue reading these articles ?
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Re: Is there a Pronoun error in this sentence ? [#permalink] New post   24 Oct 2012, 00:43
thekidreturns wrote:
Ive started reading the WSJ on the advise of many high scorers

Heres a sentence that I encountered and would like to know if a propnoun error exists in the underlined portion.
If not, please explain to me why this is correct.

"In Monday night's debate, Mr. Romney softened earlier attacks on China and the president's handling of uprisings in the Arab world, blurred differences on Afghanistan and highlighted their mutual support of continued drone strikes on suspected terrorists."

The pronoun "their" should refer to a plural noun and there seems to be no noun other than "Mr. Romney" who could've supported drone strikes.

Is this an error ? Should I continue reading these articles ?


Does seem like an error. "Their" probably refers to Romney and the president. However, the president's is in the possessive form and hence is not a proper antecedent. On the whole, this does not seem like a sentence that is "gmatically" correct.

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thekidreturns
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Re: Is there a Pronoun error in this sentence ? [#permalink] New post   24 Oct 2012, 00:48
So now Im a little wary about reading articles from the WSJ and other publications.

What are the other errors you see ? Its probably a good idea to critique sentences from the non-GMAT world some times.
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Re: Is there a Pronoun error in this sentence ? [#permalink] New post   24 Oct 2012, 02:36
"Softened earlier attacks on China and the president's handling of uprisings" also sounds confusing. Maybe "softened his stance on" or something like that would make the sentence more clear. Otherwise, the sentence properly maintains parallelism among softened, blurred and hardened.

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Re: Is there a Pronoun error in this sentence ? [#permalink] New post   24 Oct 2012, 08:59
thekidreturns wrote:
Ive started reading the WSJ on the advise of many high scorers

Heres a sentence that I encountered and would like to know if a propnoun error exists in the underlined portion.
If not, please explain to me why this is correct.

"In Monday night's debate, Mr. Romney softened earlier attacks on China and the president's handling of uprisings in the Arab world, blurred differences on Afghanistan and highlighted their mutual support of continued drone strikes on suspected terrorists."

The pronoun "their" should refer to a plural noun and there seems to be no noun other than "Mr. Romney" who could've supported drone strikes.

Is this an error ? Should I continue reading these articles ?


The omitted subject : In Monday night's debate [between Mr. Romney and the president], .. their.
This picture is clear with rest of the article.
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Re: Is there a Pronoun error in this sentence ? [#permalink] New post   28 Oct 2012, 01:20
It should b ITS.. not THEIR...this is error

THEIR directly refer to romney..
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Re: Is there a Pronoun error in this sentence ? [#permalink] New post   30 Oct 2012, 21:27
Their = obama and romney. It was obvious that THEY agreed on some issues.

You can't do standalone SC by cherrypicking sentences out of larger articles. The referent could be sentences away.
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Re: Is there a Pronoun error in this sentence ? [#permalink] New post   30 Oct 2012, 22:54
"mutual" itself implies two persons, So it can't be "it's" here. "Their" directly refers to Romney and Obama.
Hope that helps.
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Re: Is there a Pronoun error in this sentence ? [#permalink] New post   06 Nov 2012, 14:06
"Their" refers to obama and romney. If the sentence were tested by itself, it would be grammatically ambiguous. However, in the context of the news article, the audience knows *clearly* what nouns it refers to. So there is no problem. On the GMAT exam, if you see a standalone sentence like this, then you'll have to question who the other noun is.

But as it's in the context of a larger article, you can ignore this point for the purpose of reading WSJ.
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Re: Is there a Pronoun error in this sentence ? [#permalink]
06 Nov 2012, 14:06
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