@Quincy,
He took a bite of the cake. He threw the cake away.
1. He took a bite and threw the cake away.
2. He took a bite of the cake and threw it away.
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Quote:The second sentence is better. In the first sentence 'He took a bite and threw the cake away' this should strictly be interpreted as 'He took a bite the cake and threw the cake away' which is nonsense, but obviously no one will interpret this way, so it is maybe a small mistake.
How could other possibilities be nonsense, Quincy? It's certainly conceivable that a chef, angered by a student's attempts at baking a cake, chucked the whole cake.
Quote:The second sentence 'He took a bite of the cake and threw it away' is fine because 'it' means 'the cake' so the sentence means 'He took a bite of the cake and threw the cake away'.
Don't you think this is an assumption too large?
He took a bite and threw it away.
In the sentence above, does this mean the bite or the whole cake?
Quote:But a better way to join the sentences would be 'He took a bite of the cake then threw it away.
These types of sentences are commonly expressed in speech and it often makes little difference even if the listener[s] never know whether "it" was the bite or the whole cake.
To make it perfectly clear, the speaker could/might eschew any pronoun use and spell it out.