ShmoopTube

00:03

Here’s your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by gentlemen.

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It’s a more dignified breed of Shmoop du jour.

00:09

Check out the following passage...

00:20

How would you correct this underlined segment from the passage, if at all? them?

00:27

And here are the potential answers...

00:31

The underlined segment definitely sounds wonky in this sentence. Let’s read it aloud.

00:36

“So, just how did them two gentlemen manage to get fortunes inside their cookies?”

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See. Wonky.

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This is because the pronoun “them” is trying to stand in for the noun “gentleman.”

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However, the structure of the sentence makes it such that the noun is fine on its own.

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It doesn’t need any pronouns taking its place.

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We can definitely cut (A).

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Options (D) and (C) have the same issue as (A).

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“They” is a regular pronoun and “their” is a possessive pronoun.

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The possessive pronoun is particularly wonky because,

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as far as we know, these gentlemen didn’t belong to anyone but themselves.

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The correct answer is (B), which gives us the word “these.”

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In this sentence “these” is being used as a “demonstrative adjective.”

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Here, it’s modifying “two gentlemen” by helping to specify which gentlemen we’re talking about.

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Though we bet two gentlemen making fortune cookies wouldn’t be too hard to spot.

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