Editing Exercises - Pronoun Reference


1			Rewrite the following paragraph in the spaces provided to eliminate problems with pronouns. Add, delete, and substitute words as needed. 1) The Bronze Age is an historical period that came between the Stone Age and the Iron Age. 2) They use the term bronze to refer to it because its characterized by the use of bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, for tools and implements. 3) The use of such tools began in about 5000 BC, and by about 1500 BC Bronze Age technology had spread throughout Europe, the Middle East, India, and China, whose peoples, they say, developed systems of writing and arithmetic. 4) They also developed the plow, domesticated farm animals, and created wheeled carts, all of which are significant milestones in technology that us moderns often take for granted. 5) The Bronze Age also saw the rise of commerce and manufacturing in towns, the birth of commercial shipping, and the creation of many important trades and arts. 6) Indeed, much of what Bronze Age peoples left has made it possible for us to continue to progress.




2			Rewrite the following paragraph in the spaces provided to eliminate problems with pronouns. Add, delete, and substitute words as needed. 1) Either Marie Sklodowska Curie and her daughter Irene Curie Joliot make excellent starting points for an argument that women excel in science. 2) Marie Sklodowska, whom was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1867, was a chemist and physicist who's research won her acclaim around the world. 3) In 1895, after she moved to Paris, she married Pierre Curie, another physicist that shared her interest in uranium. 4) Together they discovered radium and polonium, whom she named after the country of her birth. 5) With Henri Becquerel, the man that discovered radioactivity, Marie and Pierre Curie shared the Nobel Prize for physics in 1903. 6) Eight years later, Marie won a second Nobel Prize, this time for chemistry. 7) Thus she became the first person that had ever won the prize twice. 8) Three years before that, Pierre Curie had begun teaching at the Sorbonne in Paris while continuing to pursue scientific research with his wife. 9) In 1906, however, that ended because he was run over by a large horse-drawn wagon and was killed. 10) Of course, Marie became distraught over that, but she vowed to complete that work. 11) Indeed, she took up Pierre's professorship at the Sorbonne (she was the first woman that had ever taught at that university) and continued their research. 12) The Curies had a daughter, Irene, that was as important to the history of science as her parents. 13) In 1935, she won the Nobel Prize for chemistry with her husband Frederic Joliot.




3			Rewrite the following paragraph in the spaces provided to eliminate problems with pronouns. Add, delete, and substitute words as needed. 1) The Copts are a people that claim to be descendants of the ancient Egyptians. 2) They speak a language that has evolved from the language of the people whom were living at the time of the pharaohs. 3) However, unlike the ancient Egyptians, whom employed hieroglyphics to write their language, the Copts use the Greek alphabet along with seven characters taken from an earlier form of Egyptian writing. 4) Egypt was conquered by the Arabs in the seventh century AD. 5) It resulted in Islam becoming the country's dominant religion. 6) However, the early Moslem rulers of Egypt, whom have been studied by historians of the Near East, were relatively tolerant of the Copts, whom were Christian. 7) Today there are two Coptic churches: the Coptic Church, which is aligned with Rome, and the Coptic Orthodox Church, which is the main Christian church in Egypt and which has a closer connection with Greek Orthodoxy.




4			Rewrite the following paragraphs in the spaces provided to eliminate problems with pronouns. Add, delete, and substitute words as needed. 1) They considered the Red River Settlement as the boundary between the civilized and savage world. 2) In 1872, the federal government passed the Dominion Lands Act, who was sponsored by representatives of the Canadian Pacific Railway, to encourage settlers to move west. 3) Each male settler, or homesteader, that was over the age of 21, was offered 65 hectares of free land. 4) In exchange, the settler had to pay a $10 registration fee, reside on there land for three years, build a permanent residence, and cultivate 12 hectares of that land for themselfs. 5) In the early years, it did not motivate many settlers to move west.6) Those who did found it a very difficult life. 7) Isolation and disease were a constant hardship for the first homesteaders, who's crops were often lost to drought and early frost. 8) As the railroad expanded in the 1880s, and towns were established along its route, more settlers flooded west.




5			Rewrite the following paragraph in the spaces provided to eliminate problems with pronouns. Add, delete, and substitute words as needed. 1) In the early 1990s, Italian archaeologists that were working in Syria found a collection of approximately 15,000 inscribed clay tablets including government, commercial, and religious records, who are thought to comprise the archives of a long-lost empire covering both Syria and Palestine. 2) This hitherto undiscovered Canaanite civilization dates from about 2400 B.C.; it's capital city was called Ebla. 3) Along with what we already know about this period, they finding these tablets may cast a great deal of light on biblical history. 4) Interestingly, many of the place-names mentioned in the clay tablets found at Ebla are also found in the Old Testament, including Sinai, Gaza, and Jerusalem. 5) Such names were probably well-known throughout the area. 6) However, names of people such as Ab-ra-mu (Abraham) and E-sa-um (Esau) also appear in the tablets, as does Is-ra-ilu (Israel) itself. 7) Ebrum, a Canaanite hero and king, is also mentioned in the tablets, and they think he may be Eber, the man from who the Hebrews believed themselfs descended. 8) This is perhaps the most intriguing idea that has come from the discovery of this Bronze Age city.

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