A Pronoun Problem: “That” is a Tricky Word

If someone asked me for a list of the most troublesome words in the language, I’d put “that” high on the list.

Don’t get me wrong. “That” is a wonderful word that I use all the time (notice the that there?). But that also causes more than its fair share of problems–something I was reminded of again in this morning’s newspaper.

In an article about the nation’s debt, a senior fellow from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center had some cautionary words for both parties–and a sentence that illustrates why that is a problematic word. 

What’s so interesting is that the speaker – Roberton Williams – used that correctly. Still, I would have rewritten the sentence to eliminate a pronoun problem I’ll explain in a moment.

Let’s take a look at Williams’ sentence. After warning the president that he needs to be more realistic about raising taxes “across the board on a broader group of people,” Williams had this message for Republicans:  “On the other side, the Republicans are going to have to realize that not increasing taxes requires the very, very large cuts in spending that disproportionately benefits low and middle-income households.”

My husband, who read the newspaper before I did, pointed out the sentence to me. “Shouldn’t it be benefit?” he asked.

Makes sense–but no. He (like me and everybody else who has ever taken a writing class) was taught that you ignore the prepositional phrase when you choose your verb. So the sentence would essentially read like this: “very large cuts that disproportionately benefit low and middle- income households.” You would skip over “in spending” because it’s a prepositional phrase.

But sophisticated sentences don’t always work that way. Sometimes the prepositional phrase (“in spending”) is connected to something important.

I instantly knew something was wrong. Nobody in this political climate is talking about cuts that would make life better for low and middle-income households. Well, there’s been some talk about cutting oil subsidies, but that ain’t gonna happen.

What’s really on the table is cutting spending that disproportionately benefits low and middle-income households.

To put it in another way: Are we talking about “cuts that benefit” or “spending that benefits”?

Good writers care less about grammatical correctness and more about clarity. Yes, Williams got it right. But I would have rewritten the sentence so that the meaning would be clear the first time you read it:

On the other side, the Republicans are going to have to realize that not increasing taxes will require very, very large cuts in spending and, as a result, disporportionally cut benefits for low and middle-income households.

I suppose you could use Williams’ sentence to argue for a return to sentence diagramming. Anyone diagramming that sentence would have immedately seen the difficulty–what’s the antecedent of benefit?–and fixed it.

But there’s an easier and better way that’s especially beneficial to people like me who don’t have time to diagram sentences and (frank admission here) don’t know how to do it. If a sentence seems complicated or confusing, rewrite it.

 

Share

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.