Even the best speakers and writers are sometimes caught napping. Many of our standard authors to whom we have been accustomed to look up as infallible have sinned more or less against the fundamental principles of grammar by breaking the rules regarding one or more of the nine parts of speech. In fact some of them have recklessly trespassed against all nine, and still they sit on their pedestals of fame for the admiration of the crowd. Macaulay mistreated the article. He wrote,—"That a historian should not record trifles is perfectly true." He should have used an.
Dickens also used the article incorrectly. He refers to "Robinson Crusoe" as"an universally popular book," instead of a universally popular book.
The relation between nouns and pronouns has always been a stumbling block to speakers and writers. Hall am in his Literature of Europe writes, "No one as yet had exhibited the structure of the human kidneys, Vesalius having only examined them in dogs." This means that Vesalius examined human kidneys in dogs. The sentence should have been, "No one had as yet exhibited the kidneys in human beings, Vesalius having examined such organs in dogs only."
Sir Arthur Helps in writing of Dickens, states—"I knew a brother author of his who received such criticisms from him (Dickens) very lately and profited by it."Instead of it the word should be them to agree with criticisms.
Here are a few other pronominal errors from leading authors:
"Sir Thomas Moore in general so writes it, although not many others so late as him." Should be he.— Trench's English Past and Present.
"What should we gain by it but that we should speedily become as poor as them." Should be they.— Alison's Essay on Macaulay.
"If the king gives us leave you or I may as lawfully preach, as them that do."Should be they or those, the latter having persons understood.—Hobbes's History of Civil Wars.