I can throw a ball against the wall

[mrmvp]

In the following sentence, the pronoun "it" refers to wall not to the ball.

I can throw a ball against the wall and it will never broke nor fall.

Is there a pronoun or a word that I can use to refer backwards to the word ball? I can use the word "the former" to refer to the ball. Should I rewrite the word ball again to make the sentence clear like the sentence below? Or is it redundant?

I can throw a ball against the wall and the ball will never broke nor fall.

 

[Tarheel]

It seems like you are going for a rhyme there. Perhaps:

I can throw a ball against the wall, and it will never break or fall.

Your sentence is okay. But balls don't break anyhow, although they do fall (hit the ground) quite a bit.

 

[tedmc]

It is understood that "it" refers to the ball, so it's fine. It's only with cases where there is ambiguity that you need to make it clear.

 

[Rover_KE]

I can throw a ball against the wall and the ball will never break or fall.

That's now grammatical, mrmvp, but the only ball that will never 'break' when hitting a wall is a rubber ball or a wrecking ball.

Even that will fall after hitting the wall.

 

[Tarheel]

There are all kinds of balls: basketballs, tennis balls, ping pong balls, baseballs, volleyballs, etc. As far as I know, none of them break. However, it doesn't violate the rules of grammar to say they do. Or don't. (I guess if you step on it a ping pong ball can break.)

 

[mrmvp]

It seems like you are going for a rhyme there. Perhaps:

I can throw a ball against the wall, and it will never break or fall.

Your sentence is okay. But balls don't break anyhow, although they do fall (hit the ground) quite a bit.

Thank you teachers Tarheel & Rover-KE

As far as I know is that the pronoun "it" usually refers to the closest subject which is "the wall" It is clear that the wall will never break or fall by a basketball hit for example. How do I avoid confusion when there are more than one subjects? In my humble opinion, repeating the subject over and over again in the text makes the writing redundant.

 

[Tarheel]

The question is how do you avoid confusion when there is more than one subject. The answer is it depends.

In the sentence "When I throw the ball against the wall I know that it will not break" it is unclear what "it" refers to. To fix that problem rephrase the sentence. Say: "I know the ball will not break when I throw it against the wall."

 

[Tarheel]

One more thing. A sentence without any context is one thing. However, that never happens. The ambiguity of a contextless sentence probably isn't there when the sentence is seen in whatever context in which it appears.