Is this a grammatically correct line in a poem: “Will he roll the dice, and follow it to Vegas?”?

Question

I want to use the following line in a poem: "Will he roll the dice, and follow it to Vegas?"

A couple of things to note; firstly, obviously I'm using "roll the dice" in both a figurative/idiomatic sense (as in taking a risk), and in a somewhat more literal sense (painting the image of the person actually following the dice that have been rolled to Las Vegas). That being said, my confusion here is if I can get away with using "follow it" or if I need to say "follow them" .... As I've read online "dice" traditionally refers to more than one die (i.e., the plural of die), but in the modern usage, "dice" can also be used to refer to the singular (i.e., just one die).

So, it seems like if I was referring to the image of just one die, then the way I phrased it could be correct. However, the image I'm trying to paint is the one usually associated with the phrase "roll the dice" (i.e., rolling two dice)...

So could "follow it" still be considered acceptable in this sense... or would I need to use "follow them"?... And if not referring to the dice themselves, could using, could the "it" be taken to refer to the act of rolling the dice, or would that not work either? Thanks so much in advance!!

Answer 1

It's more grammatically correct to use 'them' as 'dice' can be plural, but I will say that initially the line doesn't seem wrong so you probably could get away with using 'it'.

Also, the 'it'/'them' would refer to the actual dice, not the act of rolling them.

Answer 2

There are several issues with this sentence.

As a standalone sentence, it is ungrammatical---and probably meaningless. (There is a difference.) This can be seen by expanding the pronoun "it" to each of the possible subjects it could be referring to.

(1) The dice roll. Although the dice roll is singular, and "it" is the matching pronoun for that, it would be wrong to use it as written because there are two subjects in the sentence: the dice roll and the dice themselves. When you use a pronoun, it is generally assumed to refer to the most recently used subject---barring a broader context. When it doesn't, it leads to confusion. Here, if "it" is supposed to refer to the action of rolling the dice, then replace the pronoun with the actual action to make it clear.

Will he roll the dice, and follow the dice roll to Vegas?

But there is another problem. The dice roll can't, itself, go to Vegas---and, so, it can't be followed there. For additional clarity, the sentence would need further rephrasing:

Will he roll the dice, and follow this with a trip to Vegas?

Or, more simply and perhaps better:

Will he roll the dice and go to Vegas?

(2) The dice. This is plural, so the pronoun needs to be plural.

Will he roll the dice, and follow them to Vegas?

The sentence is now grammatically correct. However, unless it describes something taking place in a fantasy setting, what it describes is "meaningless" because the dice are not going to jump off the table and travel to Vegas---and then be followed. This is the same problem as in the first interpretation, except that, here, there is no possibility of rephrasing it in such a way that it makes sense.

But the sentence exists in a larger context. Depending on the sentence that comes before it, it could be grammatically correct:

The stolen car now leaves Boulder City, travelling northwest. Will he roll the dice, and follow it to Vegas?

In this case, because of how we process information, the pronoun "it" is assumed to refer not to the dice (or to the dice roll) but to the stolen car.

But you mention that this is a poem. Poetry has a lot more leeway than regular fiction when it comes to grammar. Many poems deliberately break rules of grammar. (I think that's where the term "poetic license" comes from.) Even if the sentence is ungrammatical, it isn't necessarily wrong. You just need to be aware of the effect you want.

A final comment. Unless the comma is needed because of how the rest of the lines of the poem are punctuated, I would remove it. It's not technically wrong, but whatever sentence you end up with would read more naturally without it. (In my "simply and perhaps better" example I didn't use a comma.)

Answer 3

I would say you indeed should use them.

To begin with, according to OED,

The form dice (used as pl. and sing.) is of much more frequent occurrence in gaming and related senses than the singular die.

Thus, when you use it, the reader will naturally assume that the antecedent of that pronoun must be the nearest preceding singular noun phrase (NP) denoting an inanimate object. And since dice appears in the preceding clause, it will be natural to interpret it as that singular NP, since (a) it is indeed an appropriate candidate (because it can be interpreted as being in the singular) and (b) no other appropriate candidate appears explicitly in the preceding clause.

The noun roll does not appear at all in your sentence, and so a roll of the dice is not the first thing one would associate with it... not when a suitable NP antecedent does appear explicitly.

Worse still, consider

[1] ^?Will he roll his two dice, and follow it to Vegas?

I think [1] is at best of marginal acceptability. Despite the fact that his two dice clearly cannot be an antecedent for it, there does not seem to be anything in [1] that could serve as an antecedent for it. If you say 'oh, I meant for it to refer to the roll of the dice', the natural response will be that this is kind of awkward and that you had better rewritten [1] so that roll of the dice actually appears in the sentence.

So, my two cents: to accomplish what you want to accomplish, you need to use them.