Original sentence: (Note that it here is a dummy pronoun, and requires no antecedent.*The big green history shows him to have been a good writer.Beginning in the 1960s , some usage guides started to reject such sentences as:.For example, consider the following sentence:.Here, him lacks any clear antecedent - it certainly cannot refer back to the big green - and the sentence must be ungrammatical, or at least meaningless, unless a previous sentence provides an antecedent.Here, it is not clear whether he refers to William or to his brother.However, the concern that it reflects is meaningful in a sentence such as this one:.The basis for this contention is that a pronoun's antecedent must be a noun, so that if Winston Churchill's is an adjective, then a pronoun cannot refer back to it.These guides argue that a pronoun's antecedent cannot be a noun in a possessive construct; in this case, they contend that Winston Churchill, embedded as it is in the construct Winston Churchill's, cannot serve as the antecedent for the pronoun him.This rule does not reflect ordinary English usage, and it is commonly ignored (intentionally or otherwise) even by those who have heard of it
Edited sentence: Here, it is not certain whether he refers to William or to his brother.However, the concern is sometimes meaningful in a sentence such as this one:.If, for instance, one replaced the phrase Winston Churchill's with the phrase the big green, the pronoun him would cease to refer to anything, and the sentence would be completely meaningless:.In casual speech, this distinction is often neglected, and can be circumvented with the help of context clues and linguistic experience.In this sentence, him refers to no one, since there is no person in the subject.Older grammar books reject sentences such as:.The "it", however, is acceptable despite not referring to an antecedent noun.The big green history shows him to have been a good writer.This is objectionable because the pronoun him refers to Winston Churchill, although grammatically it ought to refer to history