Antecedents: ACT® Test Complete Guide

Antecedents. Ante, as in before.

Antecedents refer to something that comes before. Unclear antecedents in writing can make your point confusing. For example: 'He did it.' Who's 'he'? 'That guy used an antecedent.' Which guy? See how confusing it can get?

The ACT® English section uses antecedents quite frequently. Questions often combine antecedents with other grammatical concepts. When solving antecedent questions, first check if the pronoun clearly refers to just one thing.

Antecedents Practice

Let's look at an example you might see on the ACT® Test:

While there are thousands of colleges you could attend, you have to narrow your choices to a couple of it.

Here, 'it' is meant to refer to 'thousands of colleges'. Ok, so the word it clearly refers to one thing. It can't refer to "you" because you is never an it in English, as it were. You might be thinking "thousands is more than one. How can that be 'it'?" Exactly.

The ACT® English section is testing you on whether you can make sure the pronoun agrees in number with the antecedent. In plain English, the word thousands is plural, so we should use them, which is also plural.

Note: 'of colleges' is a prepositional phrase, so it doesn't count for main subjects/nouns. See the prepositions review for more on prepositions.

We would choose whatever answer on the ACT® looks like this:

Answer: While there are thousands of colleges you could attend, you have to narrow your choices to a couple of them.

More Practice

The ACT® also tests if you can spot ambiguous antecedents - pronouns that could refer to more than one thing.

Let's wrap up with one more tricky example:

When my boyfriend plays video games with Jerome, he never responds to my texts.

In the sentence above, what does "he" refer to? You could say "he" refers to "my boyfriend" or "Jerome." Either answer would be correct because "he" refers to both. Since a pronoun needs to clearly refer to one antecedent, you need to change the word "he" so it's clear who isn't responding.

Give it a shot then check out the answer below.

Answer:

In this case, the only way you can do that is by adding in the whole phrase "my boyfriend." The word they would refer to both my boyfriend and Jerome. Besides, you can't say "they responds," because that would be wrong. You also can't change the word "responds" to "respond."

The ACT® Test will provide you with this context, so be sure to check the verb for agreement in number (i.e. he is, they are; not he are they is) if you need to use process of elimination to arrive at the right answer.

The corrected sentence should look like this:

When my boyfriend plays video games with Jerome, my boyfriend never responds to my texts.