This sentence is a minefield. “They” is a pronoun- it takes the place of a noun, usually to avoid repetition. If you are telling a story about “Jane” writing “Jane’s” name every time “Jane” speaks is repetitive and you’d likely want to replace her name in places with pronouns like “her” “she” etc. the antecedent is the noun before the pronoun which the pronoun refers to.
It is generally important that you make sure there are no nouns between the antecedent and the pronoun which the pronoun can apply to.
“Clear all the furniture from the house and then sell it.” Sell what? The house or the furniture?
In that sentence simply replacing “it” with “house” would clear the confusion so we know what we are supposed to sell.
There are certain conventions for when we write these things out- if I tell you: “there is a small room, in the center is a lamp, it is 8x10 feet…”
Wow. That’s a big lamp. We would assume that adjective refers to the noun right before it. If I want to tell you the size of the room, I should tell you before I mention the lamp.
These are some examples of relatively common ambiguity in writing caused by not paying attention to the antecedent or other fundamentals.
So due to ambiguity this sentence can be read to say that the pyramids of Giza are older to us than the pyramids of Giza were to Ancient Rome. That seems inherently wrong, and in this case you may likely figure out what was trying to be said, but it is still a tricky sentence.
The fact that “they” comes after both “Rome” and “pyramids” makes it unclear what “they” refers to here.
You can omit certain words from a sentence without compromising the sentence- bare infinitives and certain other auxiliaries exist- if I ask “can you come with me to the movie theater?” You can reply simply: “I can’t” as opposed to “no, I can’t” or “no, I can’t go to the movie theater.”
Any of those is completely understandable even if you omit key parts of the sentence since it we have established the subject is the movie theater and the action is going there.
In informal speech or where there is sufficient context we can also omit things without issue. In our example: “take the furniture out of the house and then sell it…”
If that stands alone it is ambiguous- but if it is part of an ongoing conversation or building on a previous conversation in which we established goals to keep the furniture and sell the house, we could assume the meaning would be clear- though possibility for ambiguity still would exist.
So most people probably realize that this is saying: “The time elapsed from when the pyramids of Giza were constructed to the formation of the Roman Empire was greater than the time elapsed between the formation of the Roman Empire and the present day,” but I figured it might be fun to look at the writing because it really stood out to me and I thought perhaps it would stand out to others- and to those who missed it this might be useful at some point.
Of course there are many other ways to write the idea and shorter or less dry ways too- but I figured I’d just go dry since this topic tends to be a little dry anyway lol.
It is generally important that you make sure there are no nouns between the antecedent and the pronoun which the pronoun can apply to.
“Clear all the furniture from the house and then sell it.” Sell what? The house or the furniture?
In that sentence simply replacing “it” with “house” would clear the confusion so we know what we are supposed to sell.
Wow. That’s a big lamp. We would assume that adjective refers to the noun right before it. If I want to tell you the size of the room, I should tell you before I mention the lamp.
These are some examples of relatively common ambiguity in writing caused by not paying attention to the antecedent or other fundamentals.
So due to ambiguity this sentence can be read to say that the pyramids of Giza are older to us than the pyramids of Giza were to Ancient Rome. That seems inherently wrong, and in this case you may likely figure out what was trying to be said, but it is still a tricky sentence.
The fact that “they” comes after both “Rome” and “pyramids” makes it unclear what “they” refers to here.
Any of those is completely understandable even if you omit key parts of the sentence since it we have established the subject is the movie theater and the action is going there.
In informal speech or where there is sufficient context we can also omit things without issue. In our example: “take the furniture out of the house and then sell it…”
If that stands alone it is ambiguous- but if it is part of an ongoing conversation or building on a previous conversation in which we established goals to keep the furniture and sell the house, we could assume the meaning would be clear- though possibility for ambiguity still would exist.
Of course there are many other ways to write the idea and shorter or less dry ways too- but I figured I’d just go dry since this topic tends to be a little dry anyway lol.