<p>in the eyes of the COLLEGEBOARD BUM BUM BUMMMM:</p>
<p>1) Is it WRONG to use the past perfect tense when it is NOT necessary?</p>
<p>i.e., </p>
<p>I had eaten the cake yesterday.</p>
<p>ANNNDDD SECONDLY.....</p>
<p>2) When the CONTEXT of the sentence reveals which antecedent a pronoun refers to, is the sentence still considered an ambiguous pronoun reference?</p>
<p>i.e.,</p>
<p>Fat Albert took his XXXXXXL shirt out of the laundry machine and dried it. (If "it" was underlined, would you choose it or would you say no error)</p>
<p>ANSWERING THESE QUESTIONS WOULD HELP GREATLY AND MIGHT EVEN PERSUADE ME TO STOP CAPS LOCKING SORRY</p>
<p>1) Applying Occam’s Razor or Law of Parsimony or w/e you want to call it, you should never use superfluous words in a sentence if the meaning remains unchanged. So the sentence “I ate the cake yesterday” is a more simplified and correct version of “I had eaten the cake yesterday.” Unless this is part of a larger paragraph, I would mark it as incorrect.</p>
<p>for 1) I am completely aware that it could be IMPROVED to “I ate the cake yesterday”. To clarify, I am just asking if you would mark “had eaten” as GRAMMATICALLY INCORRECT if it were underlined in an “id the error” question, not an “improving sentence” question.</p>