SC pronoun confusion.

Replace 'he' with the potential antecedents.

1) John played football with Holmes, and John scored a touchdown.

Makes complete sense.

2) John played football with Holmes, and Holmes scored a touchdown.

Makes complete sense.

Yes ! There is ambiguity.

"played football with Holmes" therefore indicates that Holmes is a object. Pronoun must refer back to the subject, not the object. The sentence is correct.

Dear VeritasPrepBrian IanStewart AnthonyRitz MartyTargetTestPrep VeritasPrepRon VeritasPrepHailey VeritasPrepErika VeritasPrepBrandon quixx23 AaronPond,

Dear the author of Veritas SC book and all verbal experts, I have similar problems in this question as well. Please note that it is from Veritas SC book.

According to the solution in P.46 Veritas SC book, the below sentence is CORRECT (no pronoun error), contradicting what ccooley said above.

However, what confuses me most is the solution from Veritas quoted verbatim below:
Does such rule ever exist in GMAT?
Why can't the pronoun refer to OBJECT??
Can you provide me with official examples, if possible?
IMO, this principle is vaguely explained. How can I apply this rule in the future?

However, the above rule contradicts the fact that below sentence is WRONG according to P.43 Veritas SC book

Applying the rule above, pronoun can't refer to object right?
Oh, there is no ambiguity here because John is object in this case? So, "he" MUST refer to "Bill"!
Why is this sentence, according to the very same book, WRONG then?

Do you have any official sentence to back up?

Thank you!

Here's the real, and admittedly subtle, distinction between these two examples: parallelism.

In the first example, "John played football with Holmes, and he scored a touchdown," the "and" creates a parallel structure. The clause after the "and," "he scored a touchdown," is independent, and it parallels the independent clause "John played football with Holmes." This parallelism suggests that the subject of the second clause -- "he" -- should match up with, and in fact refer back to, the subject of the first clause -- "John."

The second example, "Bill sent many e-mails to John while he was out of the office on vacation," contains no such conjunction and no such parallel construction. Instead we have only the modifier headed by "while" -- and this modifier is not one of the types (relative clause, appositive phrase, participle phrase) that are generally restricted to modifying what they're next to. So the pronoun receives no guidance about its intended target, and it's quite plausible to read it either way. Perhaps John was on vacation, or perhaps Bill was. Who can really say? This is a problem.

I will also say that this whole area can be a bit fuzzy and usage-specific. I would try not to lean too hard on it. In terms of prioritizing, "arguably ambiguous pronouns" definitely rate lower than, say, comma splices or agreement errors.