What is the most important idea of the second paragraph of of plymouth plantation? a. the ship encountered good weather and fair sailing at the beginning of its journey. b. the sailors decided to caulk the decks and upper works of the ship after it was damaged in a storm. c. the pilgrims and ship's officers discussed the damage to the ship and decided to continue the voyage. d. the crew used a large iron screw the passengers had brought from holland to repair a beam that broke during a storm.

to eliminate ambiguous remote or broad reference it is necessary to focus on anaphoric reference. by definition "anaphoric reference means that a word in a text refers back to other ideas in the text for its meaning." the references should be clear and leave no room for ambiguity.

in the first case the pronoun it probably refers to the car but it has not been mentioned before so we should replace it for the car. in doing so the statement becomes clear.

in sentence number   two   the pronoun he refers to charles dickens the author. yet, the first half of the sentence is about the book a tale of two cities. to repair this it would be better to rephrase the first half : after i read   a tale of two cities by dickens, he so as to remove the remote reference.