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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

Third person:

Some people who go to the theatre love to dress up for the occasion.

Make sure that if you’re talking about the same people or things that you’re consistent with which point of view you use - the first, second, or third person. Take this example:

We are constantly amazed by the athleticism of the top sports stars. Fans cheer when they see their favourite star perform a seemingly impossible manoeuvre.

Bad, bad, bad! In the first sentence we’re talking in the first person - using the pronoun ‘we’. But in the second sentence we’re talking about ‘fans’, ‘they’, and ‘their’ - which is in the third person. Generally speaking (although there are always exceptions), it pays to stay in the same person within a block of text talking about one thing. So we could fix this sentence by changing the first sentence to the third person or the second sentence to the first person.

Click here to move on to the next topic: All third person