Question 132·Hard·Form, Structure, and Sense
Neither the senior editors nor the author believed that _____ time had been wasted on revisions.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
For pronoun-agreement questions, first identify what the blank is doing (here, showing possession before a noun). Then locate its antecedent—the noun or noun phrase it refers to—and decide whether that antecedent is singular or plural and whether it refers to a person or a thing. Pay special attention to tricky structures like "neither/nor," "either/or," and indefinite pronouns ("each," "everyone"), which are usually singular. Finally, eliminate any choices that do not match in number or type, and avoid using casual "singular they" forms like "their" when the test expects a formally singular pronoun such as "his or her."
Hints
Think about the role of the missing word
Look at the words right after the blank: it comes before "time." What kind of word usually goes before a noun like this to show who it belongs to?
Match the pronoun to its noun
Ask yourself: whose time might have been wasted? Look at the beginning of the sentence: does that subject idea come across as one unit or more than one, especially with the word "neither"?
Check number and type
Once you decide whether the subject idea is singular or plural, eliminate any answer choices that don’t match that number, and also remove any choice that would normally refer to things instead of people.
Step-by-step Explanation
Identify what kind of word is missing
Look at the phrase around the blank: "believed that _____ time had been wasted on revisions." The blank comes directly before "time" and must show whose time it is. That means we need a possessive pronoun (a word like "his," "her," "their," "its") that modifies "time."
Find the word the pronoun must refer to
Ask: whose time might have been wasted?
The subject of the sentence is "Neither the senior editors nor the author." The pronoun in the blank must refer back to this subject, so it must agree with that subject in number (singular/plural) and type (people vs. thing).
Decide if the subject is singular or plural
The structure "Neither ... nor ..." is used here: "Neither the senior editors nor the author." In formal Standard English, when you use "neither," the idea is that no single one of the people involved believed this. So the subject is treated as singular overall, and any pronoun referring back to it should be singular as well.
Check each answer choice against the subject
Now test each choice:
- their: plural, does not match the singular idea created by "neither."
- its: singular but used for things or animals, not people.
- there: not possessive at all; it cannot show ownership of "time."
- his or her: singular, shows possession, and can refer to a person of unknown gender.
Therefore, the correct choice is "his or her".