Most technical writing texts contain grammar reviews, but few supply more than prescriptive rules to correct persistent examples of unclear writing. To provide a more progressive approach to grammatical analysis, this article applies the non-prescriptive constructs of modern grammar to the recurrent problem of faulty pronoun reference. Grammatical problems often arise because pronouns serve both as form-class and as structure-class words, because they often must agree in case, person, gender, and number with antecedents, and because the pronoun it is often misunderstood as an expletiv. The author suggests that small, problem-oriented doses of modern grammar may help students and professionals alike to better understand the intricacies of textual English.