Pronouns Introduction

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The pronoun is the substitute teacher of the grammar world. It shows up in place of someone else, it does its very best, and people end up lying to it and telling it that their real name is Bubbles McGee and that a dolphin ate their homework.

Okay, it would be kind of hard to lie to a poor little pronoun.

A pronoun is a word that replaces or refers to a noun or another pronoun. The noun that a pronoun replaces is called its antecedent, and a pronoun absolutely, positively must agree with its antecedent.

Pronouns are extremely useful: without them, we'd have to repeat nouns over and over (and over and over and over and… well, you get the idea), which would make our sentences bulky and repetitive.

There are nine types of pronoun:

  • Personal
  • Possessive
  • Demonstrative
  • Reflexive
  • Intensive
  • Interrogative
  • Relative
  • Indefinite
  • Reciprocal

Yeah, you're gonna need a bigger pronoun boat.

Quiz Yourself on Pronouns

1/5

Can you spot the grammatical error in this 9-year-old's sentence?


"What I want for Christmas is a Red Ryder BB Gun with a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time."


(A) Christmas
(B) Red Ryder BB Gun
(C) in the stock
(D) which

Fill in the blank:


Please meet me at the grocery store _________ roof has a giant sculpture of a smiling clown on it.


(A) whose
(B) that's
(C) which
(D) Both A and B

Fill in the blank:


Fiona's bangs look terrible because she used her mom's kitchen shears to give _________ a haircut.


(A) her
(B) herself
(C) me
(D) Both A and B

Choose the option that is grammatically correct.

(A) Whomever bought me three dozen roses is a really sweet person. Too bad they didn't include a note.
(B) I will call on whoever I see staring out the window. I have zero patience for daydreamers!
(C) Whoever actually enjoys eating limes has a problem. The thought of biting into a lime makes my eyes water.
(D) I have struggled with it my entire life, so I am always impressed by whomever can throw a tight spiral.

How could you rewrite this sentence to avoid using "they" as a singular pronoun?


When someone wants to organize their closet, they can find a lot of great space-saving products on infomercials.


(A) Change "someone wants to" to "people want to"
(B) Change "their" to "his or her" and "they" to "he or she"
(C) Change "someone," "their," and "they" to "you"
(D) All of the above

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