American poet Emily Dickinson wrote many of her poems on scraps of paper, but she also took steps to collect...

Let's begin by understanding the meaning of this sentence. We'll use our understanding of pause points and segment the sentence as shown - understanding and assimilating the meaning of each segment bit by bit!

Sentence Structure

• American poet Emily Dickinson wrote many of her poems on scraps of paper,
• but she also took steps to collect these works.
• From 1858 to around 1864,
  • for example,
• she copied more than 800 of (?)
  • into forty homemade booklets
    • (known as fascicles).

Understanding the Meaning

Let's start from the beginning:

The first sentence tells us:

• American poet Emily Dickinson wrote many of her poems on scraps of paper
  • So we know Dickinson wrote poems (and 'many' tells us we're talking about multiple poems - plural)
• but she also took steps to collect these works
  • Despite writing on scraps, she was organizing and collecting these works (which refers back to the poems)

Now the second sentence begins:

• From 1858 to around 1864, for example
  • This gives us a specific time period as an example
• she copied more than 800 of _____

Now here's where we need to fill in the blank. Let's look at our choices:

• them, this, that, it
  • These are all pronouns - words that refer back to something already mentioned

So what does this pronoun need to refer to? Let's look back:

• We have 'her poems' (plural)
• We have 'these works' (plural)
• Both refer to the same thing: Dickinson's poems

The sentence is saying she copied more than 800 of [something].
What did she copy 800 of? The poems mentioned earlier.

Since we're talking about:

• Multiple poems (plural)
• 800 of them (clearly more than one)

We need a plural pronoun: them.

Let's read the rest to see the complete picture:

• into forty homemade booklets (known as fascicles)
  • So she took 800 of these poems and copied them into 40 handmade booklets
  • 'Fascicles' is just the term for these booklets

The complete picture: Dickinson wrote poems on scraps but also organized them - specifically, between 1858-1864, she copied more than 800 of those poems into 40 homemade booklets.

What do we notice?

• The pronoun in the blank needs to refer back to 'poems' or 'works'
• Both of these are plural nouns
• When a pronoun refers to a plural noun, it must also be plural
• 'Them' is the plural pronoun that matches the plural antecedent

So we need Choice A: them.

GRAMMAR CONCEPT APPLIED

Matching Pronouns to What They Refer To

When you use a pronoun (a word that stands in for a noun), it must agree in number with its antecedent (the noun it refers back to - called the antecedent in grammar terms):

Rule: Plural antecedent → Plural pronoun | Singular antecedent → Singular pronoun

Examples:

1. Plural antecedent:
   • 'The students finished their homework. I collected them for grading.'
   • Antecedent: 'students' (plural)
   • Pronoun: 'them' (plural) ✓
2. Singular antecedent:
   • 'The book was damaged. I tried to repair it.'
   • Antecedent: 'book' (singular)
   • Pronoun: 'it' (singular) ✓
3. In our question:
   • 'Emily Dickinson wrote many of her poems...she copied more than 800 of them'
   • Antecedent: 'poems' (plural)
   • Pronoun: 'them' (plural) ✓

Key point: Even when the antecedent appears in an earlier sentence, the pronoun must still match it in number. Here, 'poems' and 'works' are both plural, so only 'them' works correctly.