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I have come across a sentence in which the pronoun 'it' occurs but seems to have no antecedent, and I think it should be omitted:

  • A controlling idea: what the writer is going to focus on it in the paragraph.

For more context, here is the page of the school English textbook from which I quoted. A page taken from a school English Textbook

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  • I don't know what it is called formally, but it is effectively doubling up the object with the "what" and the "it". "The writer is going to focus on it" is ok on its own. Or you could move "it" to the start, as "it is what the writer is going to focus on". In your construction you have done this and replaced the opening "it" by the part leading up to the colon. Having moved it and then taken it out, it is wrong to put it back where it came from.
    – Peter
    Commented Jan 28, 2021 at 10:41
  • There is no sentence involved, but rather two fragments separated by a colon. The second fragment is very probably an expansive / explicatory appositive. If this is the case, the 'it' is certainly an error and a rewrite is A controlling idea – ie what the writer is going to focus on in the paragraph. //// However, colons introduce other types of expressions of further information. Consider John: what he did in the holidays. It is possible though unlikely ...
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Jan 28, 2021 at 12:26
  • that A controlling idea: What the writer is going to focus on it in the paragraph has 'A controlling idea' as antecedent for 'it' just as 'John' is the antecedent for 'he'.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Jan 28, 2021 at 12:26

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The pronoun it in the sentence

A controlling idea: What the writer is going to focus on it in the paragraph.

is unnecessary and ungrammatical.

Such pronouns, which are usually but not always in a relative clause, are called resumptive pronouns. This is a grammatical feature of some languages, but not English.

An exception in English is the informal resumptive pronoun in statements such as following, with the resumptive it:

This virus, it's such a tragedy.

Your sentence should be rewritten without the pronoun as:

A controlling idea: What the writer is going to focus on in the paragraph.

Alternatively:

A controlling idea is what the writer is going to focus on in the paragraph.

Wikipedia has this on resumptive pronouns in English and other languages.

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  • I have added the main source of the sentece. You can check it if you want to.
    – Ata
    Commented Jan 28, 2021 at 12:02
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    @Ata. Thanks for adding the source. It is common to use the colon in this kind of sentence to separate a word from its definition or explanation. In the same way that sentence 1 ('Topic: what the paragraph is about it') would be ungrammatical, I regard sentence 2 as also ungrammatical.
    – Shoe
    Commented Jan 28, 2021 at 12:25
  • Yeah, it's an editing typo. Easy to do when you're writing and changing your mind; little words can get missed and left behind for readers to trip over. And by the way, this should give you an idea how much care and knowledge was expended on this textbook. Throw it away.
    – John Lawler
    Commented Jan 29, 2021 at 18:49
  • @Greybeard "[T]he it should NOT be omitted"? Is that a typo?
    – Araucaria - Him
    Commented Sep 26, 2023 at 20:11

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