Sometimes a pronoun appears before the noun it points to. Cataphora is the use of an expression that refers forward to a later element in the discourse, as in When she entered, Maria saw the crowd.

Writers and speakers use cataphora to create suspense, delay identification, or manage information flow. It is less common than anaphora in everyday speech but frequent in certain literary and journalistic styles. Processing cataphora requires the listener to hold an unspecified referent until the antecedent arrives.

Languages differ in how freely they allow forward reference and under what structural conditions. Discourse analysts track both anaphoric and cataphoric chains to explain coherence. Clear cataphora rewards the reader; poorly managed forward reference produces confusion.

• Forward reference to a later discourse element
• Less common than backward anaphora
• Used for suspense and information structuring
• Requires the antecedent to appear subsequently