Question

Which sentence has a pronoun usage error? thomas was supposed to pick me up, but he’s late. she drove herself to the performance, but left early. the judges showed their scoresheets to the contestants. the audience left its seats after curtain call.?

Answer 1

The answer is:  [D]:
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        "The audience left its {sic} seats after curtain call."
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The sentence should be corrected and rewritten as:
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        "The audience left their seats after curtain call."
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Note:  The subject of the sentence—"audience"—functions as a 'collective noun'—and should be treated as "the members of the audience".
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Answer 2

The correct answer is the following: option D. "The audience left its seats after curtain call." is the sentence that has a pronoun usage error. The  correct form of the sentence would be: "The audience left their seats after curtain call." A pronoun is a word used to replace a noun within a sentence, in order to avoid repetition. In the example shown, the noun that is going to be replaced is "audience". An audience is defined as assembled spectators or listeners at a public event. The correct pronoun to replace "audience" is "their" as, in this case, it is replacing a collective noun. As the audience has multiple spectators, there are going to be multiple seats for each of them, so the noun is taken as a plural one, therefore the use of the pronoun "its" is incorrect.