Pronoun Abuse - Stop It. Get Some Help.

Welcome to the Grammar Minute, where we're saving the English language sixty seconds at a time! I'm Lauren Smyth, and I recently came across a sentence in a news report that went like this: The union is pushing for workers to join after their strike resulted in twenty-five-percent pay hikes. Good, informative, lots of information packed into a small space. I just have one small uestion. Who exactly went on strike - the union or the workers? This is an example of a pronoun with an unclear antecedent. The writer almost certainly knew what they wanted to say, but the reader needs a hint. Generally, even if it's contextually obvious what te pronoun is supposed to refer to, it's a good idea to make the antecedent grammatically clear. Sometimes this can sound clunky. In the sample sentence, one way to almost fix it would be to replace "their" with "union." But this only solves half the problem. A bigger problem is that "their" shouldn't refer to a union, which is definitely an "it." The best way to fix this sentence would be to say: The union is pushing for workers to join after its strike resulted in pay hikes. And that's your Grammar Minute! Visit thegrammarminute.com for more tips and tricks.