Double-take, # 81

Dr Faustus sent this in because of a missing relative pronoun:

Link: Wikipedia, ‘Chivalric romance’

This mangle originates in a failure to harmonize the quotation, an error often seen in the work of some students, who merrily cut-and-paste text from the Internet into their essays without thinking to check whether the new material fits the immediate context syntactically — or to proofread the work later — and to adapt one or other if not.

It’s also notable that the plural pronoun that opens the second sentence (which is the second sentence of the entry, not just the extract) has no logical antecedent since no plural noun appears in the first sentence. Sometimes it is difficult to connect such orphaned pronouns with their subject noun. In this case, it is apparent what ‘They’ refers to, although it is strictly erroneous and also inelegant, and may require the reader to revisit the first sentence for clarification.

Writing should be accurate and coherent, with a smooth narrative flow. Readers should not have to proofread as they go to make the writing make sense.

missing relative pronoun; orphaned pronoun