Question

Instructions: A sentence has been broken into four parts. Choose the part that has an error.

(a) At last there came a time when the driver went
(b) further afield than he had yet gone,
(c) and during its absence, the horses began to tremble
(d) worse than ever and to snort and scream with fright.

• A. a
• B. b
• C. c
• D. d

Hint:

Trace 'its' back to its antecedent, the driver is a person and needs 'his,' not 'its.'

Answer 1

The Correct Option is C

Here's an alternative way to catch this error: rewrite each part by substituting the pronoun with the noun it is meant to stand for, and see if the substitution still makes sense.

1. In part (c), "and during its absence, the horses began to tremble," replace "its" with the most likely antecedent from the sentence, which is "the driver" (introduced in part (a)). Substituting gives: "and during the driver's absence, the horses began to tremble." This reading makes complete sense: the horses grow frightened once the driver, who normally controls or calms them, has gone off.
2. Now check if "its" could correctly stand in for "the driver." Since "the driver" is a person, English requires "his" (or "her") as the pronoun, not "its," which is reserved for objects or non-human antecedents. This mismatch confirms the error sits in part (c).
3. As a sanity check, apply the same substitution test to the other parts: (a) has no pronoun needing a check, (b) uses "he" for "the driver," which correctly matches (proving the writer does distinguish "he" from "it" elsewhere in the sentence, making the "its" in (c) look even more like a slip), and (d) has no ambiguous pronoun either.

This substitution test confirms part (c) as the faulty segment, so option C is correct.

Let's summarize:

• When you spot a pronoun, mentally swap in the noun you think it replaces and read the sentence again, if the pronoun's gender or animacy doesn't match, that's your error.
• Cross-check pronoun choices against how the same antecedent is referred to elsewhere in the sentence, here "he" in (b) already tells you the driver takes a personal pronoun, not "its."

This technique is quick and works well whenever a sentence has more than one part using pronouns for the same person or thing.