Pronouns after comma

[email protected] wrote:Hi Uva@90,

When you say "just before the comma", do you mean "immediately before the comma" or "located somewhere in the phrase that appears before the comma?"

As a general rule, a pronoun should refer to the matching noun that precedes it (although if the pronoun is vague/ambiguous, then it's incorrect).

eg. Mike and Tom were both hungry, thus they decided to share his sandwich.

Here, the pronoun "they" clearly refers to "Mike and Tom", but the vague pronoun "his" is a problem, since we don't know whether "Mike" or "Tom" is the one with the sandwich.

In some rarer situations, the pronoun "it" is used without a preceding matching noun.

Are you dealing with any specific SC prompts that you're curious about?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

Hi Rich,

Yes, I came across one sentence in MGMAT book:

"we finally chose the coffee table towards the back of the store, which we though would complement our living room furniture".

The Books says, the usage of 'which' is wrongly used int this sentence.
I initially thought 'which' modifies the coffee table. But book says it modified "store"

Hence i want to clarify..

Regards,
Uva.

The difference between having and not having commas with a relative clause is basically one of meaning. In the following sentences, for example, the word people does not stand for the same people each time:

(a) People who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

(b) People, who are the most intelligent of all creatures, sometimes act foolishly.

Sentence (a) is an English proverb meaning that people who deserve to be criticized should not criticize others. It is about some people only. Sentence (b), however, is about all people. The commas help to make this clear.

Dear Uva,

Your initial question was about the placement of commas and pronouns - specifically whether or not the pronoun after the comma always refers to the noun just before comma. It's a good question in light of the sentence you want to correct:

"We finally chose the coffee table towards the back of the store, which we though would complement our living room furniture."

In this case, the problem with the sentence is that it is unclear which noun (coffee table or store?) is being referred to by the relative pronoun "which."

It is unclear because the word we actually want "which" to refer to is "coffee table," not "store." It may not ALWAYS be the case, but it certainly usually is correct for the pronoun after the comma to refer to the noun just before the comma (I'm leaving myself some wiggle room here!). "Store" is closest to the comma and pronoun, which is exactly what we expect in correct sentence structure - hence the sentence's problem.