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Pronouns

Pronoun types

Personal pronouns

Possessive personal pronouns

Questioning pronouns

Indefinite pronouns

Demonstrative pronouns

Reflexive pronouns

Intensive pronouns

Pronouns and antecedents

Avoiding confusing antecedent and pronoun situations

Consistent use of the pronoun it

Pronouns - singular or plural

The difference between who and whom

Pronoun consistency

First person

Second person

Third person

All third person

All first person

All third person

All second person

Intensive pronouns

When you’re wanting to get a bit fancy with your sentences, you might use an intensive pronoun. These are used straight after another pronoun or noun to refer back to the pronoun or noun. Someone discussing a political election might make a comment like this:

My wife herself said that I should not vote for this person.

So in this sentence, ‘wife’ is the subject of the sentence. The ‘herself’ that comes immediately after it is an intensive pronoun - it refers to the word ‘wife’. Intensive pronouns are often used, mostly unnecessarily, to emphasise the subject of the sentence. Saying something like ‘I myself...’ uses an intensive pronoun, but often it’s better to ditch the intensive pronoun and say ‘I...’

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