ShmoopTube

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Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by baby blankets. If you think those blankets

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are cute now, just wait until they grow up.

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How would you correct the following sentence, if it needs correcting at all?

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The nursing staff welcomed me, thanked me for volunteering, and asked me to start folding

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baby blankets and placing it in the appropriate drawer.

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Looks like we're going to have more fun identifying subjects and objects with this question.

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Hey, don't judge the things that bring us joy.

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In the last clause, the speaker is the subject, because he or she is the one doing something.

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The verbs are "folding" and "placing" because that's what the speaker is doing.

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And the "baby blankets" take the object position because they're the things getting folded

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and placed.

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This makes "it" the object pronoun, since it's standing in for baby blankets.

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Unfortunately, "it" is doing a very bad job of being an object pronoun.

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"Baby blankets" is plural, so the pronoun ought to be as well.

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"It" is singular, therefore we can cross off choice (A), which is under the mistaken impression

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that the original sentence is OK.

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Knowing that the correct answer has to be an object makes choice (D) easy to eliminate as well.

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"They" is a subject pronoun, and no matter how hard it tries it'll never pass for an

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object. Choice (B) doesn't make the cut either.

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"These" is usually used to distinguish between two nearby objects.

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It's true that the speaker must've been near the blankets at some point, since he or she

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folded them--unless the speaker has telekinetic powers.

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However, the speaker is talking about his or her big baby blanket adventure in the past

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tense, so we can assume that the speaker's not up to his of her elbows in them currently.

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Choice (C) nails it, because "them" is plural and an object pronoun.

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Painful admission: our Mom made us throw away our baby blanket. And we still resent her for it.

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