6.3 Pronouns, Parallel Structure, and Neither/Nor

Neither/Nor Agreement: The Proximity Rule

Neither/nor joins two subjects into a single sentence while treating them as alternatives rather than as a combined group - and unlike a simple 'and' construction, which always takes a plural verb, a neither/nor construction takes its verb form from whichever of the two subjects sits physically closer to the verb, not from the first-named subject.

Notice that the two example sentences in the first two rows describe essentially the same real-world fact - a detective and two officers were unavailable - yet the correct verb flips from 'were' to 'was' purely because the order of the two subjects was reversed. This is exactly why the rule is called a proximity rule rather than a simple singular/plural rule: the grammar cares about which noun the verb is sitting next to, not about the overall combined headcount across both subjects.

A closely related and frequently tested error is pairing 'neither' with the wrong conjunction. Neither must always pair with nor, and either must always pair with or - the two pairs are not interchangeable. 'Neither the officer or the witness could confirm the timeline' is incorrect regardless of subject-verb agreement, because 'neither' cannot legally pair with 'or' in standard English; the sentence needs 'neither... nor' throughout.

Parallel Structure in Multi-Action Sentences

Almost every incident report contains at least one sentence describing a sequence of actions an officer performed, and every item in that sequence must share the same grammatical form - a requirement called parallel structure. When one item in the list breaks form, usually by switching verb tense or verb type partway through, the sentence becomes both grammatically incorrect and, worse, genuinely harder to parse quickly under the kind of scrutiny a police report receives.

In the first non-parallel example, 'secured' (simple past), 'questioning' (a gerund, functioning as if it were a different kind of word entirely), and 'had collected' (past perfect) are three different verb forms awkwardly forced into what should be one clean list of three actions performed by the same subject. The parallel correction locks every verb into the same simple-past form the first item established, which is the standard and most natural choice for describing a completed sequence of actions in an incident report.

The second pair of examples shows a related but distinct version of the same problem: the third item in the non-parallel version switches to a completely different subject ('officers') mid-list, breaking the implied 'the suspect was [verb], [verb], and [verb]' pattern the first two items established. The corrected version keeps all three actions attached to the same passive-voice subject (the suspect), which is what the reader expects once the sentence begins with 'the suspect was arrested.'

Finding and Fixing Parallel Structure Errors

A practical way to check any multi-action report sentence for parallel structure is to mentally isolate each item in the list and read it as though it stood alone, attached to the sentence's shared subject. If every isolated version reads naturally and consistently - 'the officer secured the scene,' 'the officer questioned the witnesses,' 'the officer collected evidence' - the sentence is parallel. If one isolated version sounds noticeably different in form from the others - 'the officer questioning the witnesses' does not read as a complete, natural statement the way the other two do - that item is the one breaking parallel structure and needs to be adjusted to match.

Pronoun Reference Clarity: Ambiguous and Vague Antecedents

A pronoun's antecedent is the specific noun it refers back to, and report writing has zero tolerance for a reader having to guess which noun that is. Two distinct problems cause this: ambiguous reference, where a pronoun could plausibly point to more than one named noun, and vague reference, where a pronoun points to an entire idea rather than to any single noun at all.

In the ambiguous-antecedent example, 'he' could grammatically refer either to Officer Diaz or to the suspect - both are singular, male-referenced nouns already present in the sentence, and English pronouns carry no marker distinguishing which one is meant. The fix does not add more pronouns to clarify; it removes the ambiguous pronoun entirely by switching to a direct quotation, which is also standard, defensible report-writing practice for capturing exactly what was said during an arrest.

In the vague-reference example, 'which' does not clearly point to 'resisted arrest,' to 'dropped the weapon,' or to the combined event of both actions together - it points loosely at the whole preceding clause, leaving the reader to guess what specifically upset the witnesses. The fix replaces the vague pronoun with a specific noun phrase naming exactly what caused the reaction, removing the guesswork altogether.

The missing-antecedent example shows a third variation of the same underlying problem: 'they' appears with no noun anywhere in the sentence for it to refer back to at all - perhaps the writer had a specific group of employees in mind, but nothing in the sentence itself names them. Every pronoun used in a report needs a clear, single, already-named noun it refers back to; whenever a pronoun could point to more than one candidate, could point to a whole idea instead of a noun, or has no candidate at all, replacing it with the specific noun is always the safer and clearer choice in a document that may later be read aloud in court.