PSAT Glitch

[Dave Wilton]

>         Since my original purpose in posting the link to the
> Washington Post article was to criticize journalism teacher
> Kevin Keegan and his purported rule that a possessive cannot
> serve as a pronoun's antecedent, I was surprised to find
> myself ranked among his defenders.  However, I am sympathetic
> to the argument that students should not be penalized for
> applying prescriptive grammar manuals, though to my mind a
> manual's credibility is undercut when it gives such guidance.
>  Do any of the better-regarded texts take this position?

Yes, it seems unfair to penalize students for their teachers and textbooks,
but isn't this always the case? Should the College Board cater to the whims
of pedants? Eliminating the question and rescoring the test only reinforces
the excessively pedantic behavior. It is the teacher who must change, not
the test. (God, I can't believe I'm defending the College Board.)

I don't know of any grammar manuals that advocate this rule and I know of no
writers that follow it--I can pull just about any book off my shelf and find
genitive pronominal antecedents in it. The only sources that I've personally
seen that even talk about the rule are ones that ultimately reject it as
being silly. MWDEU cites three manuals that advocate the rule, but I've
never heard of them. One can always find sources that support any position,
no matter how unreasonable. It is the quality of the sources that count and
judging by the reaction here, Keegan's position is utterly untenable. Where
there is genuine disagreement/confusion among grammarians over a point
(e.g., split infinitives), it is not fair to test students on it, but that
is not the case here.