ence by the use of _which_ referring to an idea:

|A card from C. A. Laird, son of Harry Laird, informs|
|the _Democrat_ that his father is slightly improved |
|and that they now have hopes of his recovery, |
|although he suffers much pain from his fractured |
|jaw, which will be good news to his many Lock Haven |
|friends. |

=148. Agreement of Pronouns in Number.=--A second prime cause of
incorrect reference is found in a writer's failure to make a reference
word agree in number with the noun to which it refers. Such faulty
reference occurs most frequently after collective nouns, such as _mob_,
_crowd_, _council_, _jury_, _assembly_; after distributive pronouns,
such as _everyone_, _anybody_, _nobody_; and after two or more singular
and plural nouns, where the reporter forgets momentarily to which he is
referring. In the following sentences note that each of the italicized
pronouns violates one or more of these principles, thereby polluting the
clearness of the meaning:

|The mob was already surrounding the attorney's home,|
|but _they_ moved so slowly that we got in ahead. |

|We have heard more than one express _themselves_ |
|that next year Merrillan should have the biggest |
|celebration of the century. |

|Everyone who had any interest in the boat was |
|inquiring about _their_ friends and relatives. |

|A peculiar thing about each one was that _they_ |
|chose a husband with a given name that rhymed much |
|the same with _their_ own. Mrs. Baker was Josephine |
|Ramp and secured Joe as her husband; Arnie Hallauer |
|and Annie Ramp, Gust Lumblad and Gusta Ramp, and |
|Eugene Carver and Ella Ramp. The _latter_ is a |
|widow. The given name of each one commences with the|
|same letter in each instance. |

=149. Ambiguous Antecedents.=--Then there is a use of the pronoun with
an unclear antecedent buried somewhere in the sentence, so that the
pronoun seems to refer to an intervening word. Such a misuse really is a
matter of clearness rather than of grammar, and should come under the
next section of this chapter, but it will be discussed here for the sake
of including all misuses of the pronoun at once. The ambiguous use of
pronouns is the most common error of faulty reference. The following are
typ