i am going NUTS. help!

Test Preparation SAT Preparation
1

<p>i am going nuts over this one grammar rule
i see disparity everywhere
Ok first.
"The students' nerves were on edge as they waited to hear the results"
shouldn't "they" be "the students"? I know it may be "obvious", but it is ambiguous; therefore, it is grammatically incorrect right? the subject in the sentence is "nerves"
But, this prep class i go to for SAT said "no error." keep in mind, they do make mistakes sometimes. So I went on with my life.
THEN
I see this in a Barron's book, somewhat more reliable maybe. Even though they do have mistakes sometimes, but this book seems to be pretty good so far.
"Despite Mitchell's steadfast attempts to mitigate his friends' ongoing rivalry, he was ultimately unable to mediate their long-overdue reconciliation."
The right answer is "he"..it is wrong. Answer explanation in book says " because it does not contain the proper antecedent (Mitchell's ATTEMPTS). I totally agree
But compared to my prep class, its contradictory.
and yet here's another contradictory question, in the same Barron's book:
"Mr. Hinton's employees agree that [it is loudly and rapidly that he barks out orders]"
answer choices:
A) as is now
B)he barks out orders loudly and rapidly
C) loudly and rapidly, his barking out orders
D) he barks out orders, he does this loudly and rapidly
E) orders are barked out loudly and rapidly by him</p>

<p>B is obviously correct
BUT aren't all of these wrong? because Hinton's EMPLOYEES is the subject....</p>

<p>I'm so confused :/
what I think: I feel like in all of these cases, the pronoun is technically vague..but everything is so contradictory!!</p>

2

<p>i would say not to worry about this particular rule too much since i haven’t seen any SAT test that shows this particular kind of ambiguous pronoun. i would agree more with the second example because ‘he’ can’t be referred to ‘attempts’. but again, you can look at the sentence in both ways.</p>

3

<p>It’s unlikely to come out, but those are wrong. There’s one exception, though: it’s permissible for a possessive noun to serve as antecedent for a genitive (possessive) pronoun: Mike’s gold-plated bidet was his most prize possession.</p>

4

<p>oh reallly??? cuz tahts like a huge rule i was always confused about. so thats ok?? meaning the one with “Mitchell’s attempts” should actually be ok right?</p>

5

<p>Yeah, in the “Mitchell’s attempts” sentence, “his” is okay but “he” isn’t. </p>

<p>Doesn’t matter, though–the SAT does NOT test this construction.</p>