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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

Pronouns and antecedents

Often in a sentence, you will have a pronoun as well as the word that the pronoun represents. Take this sentence for example:

The pronoun ‘who’ in this sentence represents the person ‘John’, who is mentioned at the start of the sentence. The word John is the antecedent of the pronoun ‘who’ in this sentence. The antecedent of a pronoun is the word that the pronoun represents. Simple sentences won’t have antecedents for their pronouns, such as this one:

He is late.

It’s simple. There’s the pronoun ‘he’, which is also the subject of the sentence, the linking verb ‘is’, and the subject complement ‘late’, which tells us extra information about the subject.

Click here to move on to the next topic: Avoiding confusing antecedent and pronoun situations