A Comprehensive Guide to Pronouns

If we had to state the full name of every noun we mention, every time we mention that noun, our writing would begin to sound quite redundant.

Last night, I went to the movies with my girlfriend. My girlfriend and I had decided to see Cars 3. My girlfriend wanted snacks, so my girlfriend waited in line to get snacks while I went into the theater.

Pronouns to the Rescue!

Enter pronouns, such as I, she, him, and they, those small words that fill in when we refer to a noun without spelling out its full name. With pronouns, the previous excerpt begins to sound a lot better.

With pronouns

Last night, I went to the movies with my girlfriend. We had decided to see Cars 3. She wanted snacks, so she waited in line to get them while I went into the theater.

Pronouns: Regular Nouns’ Helping Hand

Used in nearly every sentence, pronouns do more for our writing than prevent repetition: they help us control our writing pace, allow us to categorize and group things, show ownership and personal connection, clarify subject-object relationships, and place extra emphasis on nouns we want to highlight. 

Pronouns function just like nouns – subjects and objects – filling in when nouns get worn out and need some back up. You’ve probably used these pronouns before in your writing.

I	it	who
me	us	when
he	we	where
she	they	which
you	them	that

 

Clarity is King: Use Clear Antecedents

The term antecedent refers to the noun for which a pronoun substitutes. Almost always, the writer will mention the antecedent before substituting a pronoun. Since pronouns fill in for actual nouns, you must make sure that when you use a pronoun – she, for example – the reader knows the noun it references – my sister, Linda. This means that the pronoun and antecedent are in agreement. Below, see the antecedent reference in italics, and the pronouns underlined:

I went to get pizza with my sister, Linda. She always orders hers with mushrooms.

Types of Pronouns

Pronouns fall into several categories, each with unique rules and functions, and this article will walk through those pronoun categories, providing illustrative examples along the way.

1. Personal Pronouns

Indicating a person, animal, or thing that the speaker references, personal pronouns most often fill in for a name, although they frequently fill in for the titles of things too.

• Antecedent: My sister’s name is Sophie
• Personal Pronoun: She eats a lot of pasta.
• Antecedent: Look at my brand new Xbox One.
• Personal Pronoun: Stop touching it!

Personal pronouns organize into singular personal pronouns, such as I, you, she, he, it, him, and her, and plural personal pronouns, such as we, y’all, they, us, and them.

Further, most (but not all) personal pronouns change depending on if they function as the sentence’s subject, the main thing doing the action, or the sentence’s object, the main thing receiving the action.

Subject Form	Object Form
I	me
you	you
who	whom
she	her
he	him
it	it
they (plural)	them
we (plural)	us

 

• Correct: He dressed up as a vampire on Halloween, to scare her.
• Incorrect: Him snuck up behind she, to give she a scare.
• Correct: You should come study with us.
• Incorrect: You should come study with we.

Who and Whom: Subject and Object

Who vs. whom can be tricky, but it helps to remember that who and he are both subject form, while whom and him are object form. The m only enters the equation in the object, so whenever you would say him, you can say whom. 

• Correct: Who will cook my dinner? (She will cook my dinner)
• Correct: For whom will you cook dinner? (Will you cook dinner for her?)
• Incorrect: You play baseball with who? (You play baseball with she?)

Once you master personal pronouns, storytelling becomes much more fun and dynamic. You can combine and distinguish your own viewpoints with the authors you cite, with the characters who occupy your story, or with your own audience. You can speak directly to your audience (you), or speak to someone else (he/she/they), and personal pronouns help you make these distinctions clear as day for your reader.

2. Possessive Pronouns

Possessive pronouns show ownership, as well as the relationships between people and the origins of people or things. The most common possessive pronouns include the following:

• mine
• yours
• his
• hers 
• ours (plural)
• theirs (plural)
• its 

Keep in mind that possessive pronouns (mine) differ from possessive adjectives (my). 

• Correct: I bought a new pet turtle, and now she’s mine.
• Incorrect: Please don’t touch that turtle, she’s mine turtle.
• Correct: After I gave you that gift, it became yours.
• Incorrect: After I gave you that gift, it became your.

Note: Possessive pronouns never use apostrophes, although most regular possessive nouns, possessive proper nouns, or possessive antecedents do.

• Correct: That hairbrush is Mom’s.
• Correct: That hairbrush is hers.
• Incorrect: That hairbrush is her’s.
• Correct: I love my hamster. Its color is brown.
• Incorrect: It’s color is brown.

3. Relative Pronouns

Relative pronouns, which can add variety to your sentence structure, illustrate how one idea or clause relates to another. These pronouns begin dependent clauses. That means they usually connect directly to their antecedent, from where the relative pronouns provide more information. (The italicized words here, plus the ones listed below demonstrate relative pronouns.) 

• who, whom
• where 
• when 
• which 
• that 
• whose 

Each of these relative pronouns works best in a dependent clause, tucked behind their antecedent, right after a comma. When used this way, they provide additional information about your nouns while spicing up your sentence structure.

• Correct: I like to watch Steph Curry, who leads the league in three-pointers.
• Incorrect: I like to watch Steph Curry, he leads the league in three points.
• Correct: My grandpa was born in 1939, when World War II began.
• Incorrect: My grandpa was born in 1939. When World War II began.

Keep in mind that relative pronouns should stay as close behind their antecedent as possible, where they will maximize the reader’s clarity about their referent.

4. Reflexive Pronouns

If you want to help yourself become a better writer, you should try to incorporate a few reflexive pronouns, which enter the picture when an action has the same subject and object. If I wanted to talk about myself, or my dad wanted to talk about himself, we would use reflexive pronouns to talk about ourselves.

Now that I’ve used pretty much all of them, here are the reflexive pronouns:

• myself 
• yourself 
• himself
• herself 
• itself
• ourselves (plural)
• themselves (plural)

Keep in mind that reflexive pronouns typically function as the object of a sentence, the one getting acted upon. Additionally, the pronoun themself, traditionally used in nonstandard English, can function when talking about a single subject with non-distinguished or non-binary gender.

• Correct: My friend Lauryn is sitting by themself.
• Incorrect: My friend Lauryn is sitting by themselves.
• Correct: Why don’t you all just go to dinner by yourselves, without me?
• Incorrect: Why don’t you all just go to dinner by you, without me?
• Correct: When my father and I make mistakes, we always correct ourselves.
• Incorrect: When my father and I make mistakes, we always correct us.

5. Indefinite Pronouns

Everybody uses indefinite pronouns. But still, many don’t know this tool by name. Indefinite pronouns refer to those pronouns that don’t give a clearly defined referent, instead leaving the referent mysterious or unspecified.

• anybody, nobody
• most, some
• everything, nothing
• all, none
• sometimes, every time

Indefinite pronouns have a variety of uses, referring to the following:

• A total amount, or absent amount: I needed help from everybody, but got help from nobody.
• An unnamed/unknown person or thing: Someone stole my shoes, but I can’t figure out who.
• A general or loosely specified amount: My brother took most of my candy, just leaving some.

To make our indefinite pronouns more clear and place some useful boundaries around them, we often attach our indefinite pronouns to prepositional phrases or dependent clauses.

• Anybody who disagrees with me is wrong. (who disagrees with me is a dependent clause)
• All of my friends went to the party without telling me. (of my friends is a prepositional phrase)

Subject-Verb Agreement with Singular and Plural Indefinite Pronouns

When using indefinite pronouns, make sure to notice if the pronoun functions as singular or plural, to ensure that your verbs properly agree with your subject – the indefinite pronoun. To demonstrate, let’s look at a few examples below:

Singular Indefinite Pronouns

• Correct: I get angry when someone cuts me off on the road.
• Incorrect: I get angry when someone cut me off on the road. (treating someone like a plural noun)
• Correct: Nobody looks out for you the way I do.
• Correct: It feels bad when anybody calls you a name.
• Incorrect: It feels bad when anybody call you a name. (treating anybody like a plural noun)

Plural Indefinite Pronouns

• Correct: We all just want the best for you.
• Incorrect: We all just wants the best for you.
• Correct: Between my parents, both want me to succeed.
• Correct: Most of my clothes have cotton fabric.
• Incorrect: Most of my clothes has cotton fabric.

Since the English language always likes to make things difficult, some of the above indefinite pronouns can work as either plural or singular, depending on their context. 

• Correct: All of my cheese is gone.
• Correct: All of my cheese puffs are gone.

6. Interrogative Pronouns

A good reporter doubles as a master of interrogative pronouns, asking What? Which? Whose? For whom? Who? As you may have deduced from that list, interrogative pronouns are those pronouns that interrogate, or ask questions. 

• what 
• which 
• whose 
• who 
• whom 

Just like all pronouns replace antecedent nouns, interrogative pronouns typically replace the answer to the question where they exist.

• Correct: What attacked you? A bear attacked me.
• Correct: Whose is the best painting? Amy’s is the best painting.
• Correct: Which is your house? That green one is my house.
• Correct: For whom does the bell toll? For you, the bell tolls.

As a reminder, who acts as a sentence’s subject, and whom acts as a sentence’s object. For more clarification and examples about using who vs. whom, check out this guide’s section titled “Who and Whom: Subject and Object.” 

Some interrogative pronouns, like which or whose, can double as interrogative adjectives, and some relative pronouns, like where or when, seem like interrogative pronouns. The difference lies in the function. If the term both interrogates and acts as a noun, it’s an interrogative pronoun. 

If it introduces a clause, it’s a relative pronoun and not interrogative.

• Who as an interrogative pronoun: Who is knocking at my door?
• Who as a relative pronoun: I went to get ice cream with my dad, who always cheers me up.

If the term interrogates while describing a noun, it’s an interrogative adjective, not pronoun.

• Which as an interrogative pronoun: Which is your favorite? 
• Which as an interrogative adjective: Which dinosaur is your favorite?

7. Intensive Pronouns

As I write this article myself, I can’t help but wonder if you yourself have learned about pronouns thus far. Just like their name suggests, intensive pronouns serve to intensify, or place extra emphasis on, their antecedent noun.

• myself (intensifies I)
• yourself (intensifies singular you)
• itself (intensifies it)
• himself (intensifies he)
• herself (intensifies she)
• ourselves (intensifies us)
• yourselves (intensifies plural you)
• themselves (intensifies they)
• themself (intensifies singular them)

The pronoun themself can function when talking about a single subject with non-distinguished or non-binary gender. 

Typically, writers use intensive pronouns when the circumstance places special importance on that noun’s particular nature and identity. For example, a woman raising a whole family on her own, an impressive accomplishment, warrants the statement that she raised them herself. Similarly, if my three friends and I organize a fundraising event that generates $10,000, an earning that typically requires significantly more people, we would emphasize our notable achievement by saying we raised the money ourselves. 

• Correct: My grandpa moved to the United States by himself.
• Incorrect: My grandpa moved to the United States by him.
• Correct: You yourself admitted that I won the game.

8. Demonstrative Pronouns

Imagine a small kid pointing at a rock, exclaiming “That is a cool rock!” Or a wife, whose husband treats her poorly, finally saying “I can’t do this anymore.” Both of these cases, where the pronoun acts as a pointer finger indicating a particular referent, exemplify demonstrative pronouns.

• that
• this
• these (plural)
• those (plural)

Like several other forms of pronouns, demonstrative pronouns change form when referring to plural nouns or singular nouns, but they don’t change forms between the subject and object functions.

• Correct: I can’t believe that. (singular object)
• Correct: Will you take these to the laundromat? (plural object)
• Correct: This won’t hurt at all. (singular subject)
• Correct: Those always get stuck up there. (plural subject)

Keep in mind that, like interrogative pronouns, demonstrative pronoun words can also function as demonstrative adjectives. So, if the above words describe a noun and don’t act as the noun, you will know that they are actually demonstrative adjectives.

• Demonstrative pronoun: Will you carry this for me? (this acts as its own noun)
• Demonstrative adjective: Will you carry this table for me? (this describes table)

9. Reciprocal Pronouns

Well, you’ve almost finished this list I wrote. I’m proud of you. Are you proud of me? One could say, then, that we are proud of each other. What a nice sentiment, especially because it uses a reciprocal pronoun, each other, which communicates a mutual action, or an action that multiple parties exchange.

• each other
• one another

Note that both reciprocal pronouns have spaces between the words. People commonly spell each other as a single word (eachother), but this is incorrect. Reciprocal pronouns, which always refer to multiple antecedents, show that each antecedent performed the action equally.

• Correct: All the players on the basketball team helped each other to win.
• Incorrect: My brother helped each other win the game.

Finally, reciprocal pronouns have the unique feature of always acting as a sentence object, never a subject.

• Correct: Everyone in my family steps up to help one another.
• Incorrect: One another is always helping in my family. (sounds awkward)

Wrapping up

Well, you have now read about all the different forms of pronouns. You know the massive variety of functions a pronoun can have, you know how to adjust a pronoun depending on if it functions as a subject or object, and you know how to customize verbs so that they align with their pronoun’s tense. Heck, you even know what an antecedent is. 

So get writing, and feel free to consult this guide again if you ever feel stuck on pronouns.