The vague antecedent (5)

A frequent error that hampers clear writing is the vague antecedent. An antecedent is a noun (a word, phrase or clause) that a pronoun refers to. Generally, the antecedent should precede the pronoun.* The antecedent should be clear, not vague.

In summary: every pronoun should have an easily identifiable noun as its antecedent.

Example

Here’s part of the setup instructions for a JVC television receiver:

When you turn your television on for the first time the interactive plug-in menu will appear. The plug-in menu helps you to get your TV ready to use by letting you set your preferences for:

• The language in which you want the onscreen menus to appear.

• Setting the TV’s clock to the correct time so your timer functions will work properly. You can choose “Auto” or “Manual” for setting the clock.

• The auto tuner setup of which channels you wish to receive.

We recommend you complete the interactive plug-in items before you start using your television.

Note:

• If you press the MENU button while setting up the interactive plug-in menu, it will skip over it.

Analysis

When the reader reads that Note, he sees that the pronoun it appears twice. He assumes that the two pronouns do not refer to the same antecedent.

Having made that assumption, the reader then wonders, “what are the two antecedents, and therefore how can I restate the sentence?”

Two plausible restatements are:

• If you press the MENU button while setting up the interactive plug-in menu, the regular (everyday) menu will skip over the interactive plug-in (one-time) menu.

• If you press the MENU button while setting up the interactive plug-in menu, the interactive plug-in (one-time) menu will skip over the regular (everyday) menu.

There are many additional plausible restatements; most of them depend on what the JVC writer means by “skip over.” Does he mean interrupt or pause or abort or overwrite or something else?

The answer is more than a matter of semantics. For example, “If you press the MENU button while setting up the interactive plug-in menu, the action will pause the interactive plug-in menu” would mean that the reader could immediately resume the interactive plug-in menu.

In contrast, abort would mean that he could not immediately resume the interactive plug-in menu. And he would not know how to restart the interactive plug-in menu, or even whether it would be possible to do so.

Our poor reader is now stuck; he has no additional context to help him guess. If he wants to know what the JVC writer means, he must press the MENU button while setting up the interactive plug-in menu and see what happens – notwithstanding that the ostensible purpose of written instructions is to allow the customer to set up the equipment without having to rely on guesswork, telepathy, experimentation or divine intervention.

The Takeaway: Avoid vague antecedents. Every pronoun should have an easily identifiable noun (a word, phrase or clause) as its antecedent. Don’t make your readers guess which noun you mean. It’s bad manners and bad business.

See disclaimer.

*The English word antecedent comes from Latin for going before.