In the sentence "Neither the hammer nor the nails were returned to (its, their) proper place," which pronoun is correct?

In the sentence "Neither the hammer nor the nails were returned to (its, their) proper place," the correct pronoun is "their." This is because the subject of the sentence includes "nails," which is plural. In cases like this, when using "neither... nor," the verb and any pronouns must agree with the closest noun. Since "nails" is plural, it requires the plural pronoun "their" to reflect that.

Using "its" would imply possession by a singular noun, which does not match the plural nature of "nails." Although "hammer" is also part of the subject, it does not affect the choice of pronoun in this structure because "nails" is the closest noun to the pronoun, and it is plural. Therefore, "their" appropriately indicates that we are talking about the proper place belonging to the "nails."