Discussion Groups / English Usage / June 2010

In another group, someone asked for a word describing
"like talking to a child", and a respondent provided
"patronizing".   I would have suggested "condescending".  
I do not have much feel for "patronizing" but I thought

If they call one more thing "iconic" I'm going to go crazy.  
Please send help.

From today's Times: "Capello[1] waits on injured players".  Seems a bit
counter-productive to me.
[1] The English football team's manager.

I'm constantly wondering when I can substitute pronouns for the
subjects and objects of a sentence without confusing the reader. So, i
would like to know if there was any definitive way of determining
this, for instance, in the following sentence: