Introduction to Pronouns
A pronoun is more than "a word that takes the place of a noun." Learn about pronoun categories and cases, and the importance of making them agree in number, gender, and person.
Pronouns take the place of, or refer to, a specific noun in a sentence. To use pronouns correctly, make sure they agree in gender, number, and person with the noun they are replacing or referring to (the antecedent, or referent noun).
The English language has three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. A pronoun's gender tells if it is replacing (or referring to) a masculine, feminine, or neuter noun. To refer to a male, we use he, his, and him; to a female, she, her, and hers; and to animals or things, it and its.
Joseph took Wanda's car to the mechanic.
He took her car to the mechanic.
He took it to the mechanic.
In today's society, we are moving away from gender-specific titles and using more inclusive words, such as police officer, fire fighter, mail carrier, and flight attendant, rather than policeman, fireman, mailman, and stewardess. It is never correct, however, to refer to people as it, so the pronouns he and she must still be used when referring to a particular person.
A pronoun that takes the place of or refers to a singular noun (one person, place, or thing) must be singular as well. The same applies to plural pronouns and nouns.
If an employee wants to park in the hospital parking lot, then he or she must apply for the appropriate tag to do so.
Employees who need to renew their parking tags must show their current hospital ID cards.
Words like anybody, anyone, everybody, everyone, each, neither, nobody, and the like are singular and must take a singular pronoun:
- Everybody must have his or her ID card validated.
To avoid awkward language, it is sometimes better to recast the sentence in the plural:
- Employees must have their ID cards validated.
English grammar has three "persons": first, second, and third. First-person pronouns like I, me, we, and us include the speaker. Second-person pronouns involve only you, your, and yours. Third-person pronouns—he, she, it, they, them, and so on—include everybody else.
I went with my family to Yellowstone State Park.
You wouldn't have believed your eyes—the scenery was amazing.
Doug said he would take photos with his new camera.
Categories and Cases
Pronouns are divided into five categories: personal, demonstrative, relative, indefinite, and interrogative, and four cases: subjective, objective, possessive, and reflexive.
Personal pronouns can refer to the speaker or speakers (first person), or to those being spoken to (second person), or to those who are spoken about (third person). The following table shows the subjective case personal pronouns, which are pronouns used as the subject of a sentence.
In a sentence containing a pronoun, the word the pronoun refers to is called the antecedent.
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