Page:The king's English (IA kingsenglish00fowlrich).pdf/112
(and is not concerned with...'), or, by inserting 'they', coordinate it with the main sentence. Obvious as the latter correction is, the sentence repays close examination, as illustrating the incoherence of thought that may underlie what seems a very trifling grammatical slip.
But in our third example, the relative clause is nondefining; it is grammatically equivalent to, and could be replaced by, an independent sentence: 'Many persons are in the habit of using it'. There is nothing grammatically wrong in this type of coordination; it is objectionable only because it seems to promise what it does not fulfil. When the common subject of two coordinates is expressed only with the first, it is natural to assume that all words preceding it are also to be applied to both coordinates; and the violation of this principle, though not of course ungrammatical, is often felt to be undesirable in other than relative clauses.
(ii) In the sentences considered above, the antecedent of the relative did not belong to the second coordinate, and could not have been represented in it without the material alterations there proposed. But it may also happen that the antecedent, as in the following examples, belongs equally to both coordinates, being represented in the first by a relative, in the second by some other pronoun.
There were two or three whose accuracy was more scrupulous, their judgement more uniformly sober and cautious.—Bryce.
He renewed the old proposal, which Pizarro treated as a piece of contemptible shuffling, and curtly rejected it.
Which she has it in her option either to do or to let it alone.—Richardson.
In the pair of parallel coordinates from Mr. Bryce, insert the suppressed 'was', and it becomes clear that 'whose', not 'their', is the right pronoun.
In the 'Pizarro' sentence, 'it' is not only superfluous, but disturbing to the reader, who assumes that 'which' is common to both clauses, and on reaching 'it' has to glance back and