WANTED: Grammar Expert

Cindy C. cindysphinx at comcast.net
Wed May 14 19:39:00 UTC 2003


Hi,

> > "Toni Morrison's genius enables her to create
> > novels that arise from 
> > and express the injustices African Americans
> > have endured."


Oh, you guys are so *good!*

The error is in the phrase "her to create."  As the article 
explained:

"The word 'her' . . . was improperly referring to 'Toni 
Morrison's' . . . . Many grammar manuals insist that a pronoun such 
as 'her' should refer only to a noun, not, as in the case of the 
possessive 'Toni Morrison's,' an adjective." 

Similarly, the following sentence violates the same rule of grammar:

"Professor Keegan's success has given him some satisfaction."

It should be:

"Professor Keegan's success has given the professor some 
satisfaction."

Uh, is there any way we can go about getting that particular rule of 
grammar changed or something?  I'm not a fan of it, myself.

Cindy -- noting that 53% of the students found no grammatical error 
in the test question 





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