PRONOUN CRASH COURSE – Part One
Sadly, some of the most common errors in the English language are tied to some of the smallest words – pronouns. What follows is an examination of a few of the absolute basics and a heads-up about the most common examples of pronoun abuse.
The three main types of pronouns
Nominative – these are the ones that act as the subjects of sentences (I, They, We)
Objective – These are the direct object pronouns (me, us, them)
Possessive – AN IMPORTANT NOTE! A possessive PRONOUN can answer the question “Whose is it?” in a single word: OURS, MINE, THEIRS. Words like my, our, and their that require a noun after them, are possessive ADJECTIVES as in: Whose book? MY book. Some words (his, its) can be both.
There are further breakdowns within these three categories, but for now, let’s keep things simple. The only other types that I want you to be aware of are…
Reflexive – These are the “-self” pronouns. (Himself, Myself)
Personal – Any pronouns one would use when referring to a person (he, them, our)
Impersonal – Any pronouns one would not use when referring to a person (it, that, these, which)
COMMON ERROR #1 – Compound subject or direct object
Nobody in this class would ever say “Doug gave the ball to I” or “Him ate all the bread” yet intelligent people make similar mistakes all the time, saying things like, “Us and them threw the party” or “They sold watches to he and I.” The cause of the confusion is the jump from a simple subject or direct object, like in the first two examples, to the complex ones, like in the latter two examples. Keep your ears open to this mistake, and catch yourself whenever you are using the complex structures. You can know if you are using the correct pronouns if you get rid of the “guest” who is causing confusion … in other words, you wouldn’t say “Us threw the party” or “They sold the watches to he” (OR “They sold the watches to I”).
EXAMPLES – Correct any errors (not all examples have errors, some have several)
1) She and me went to go visit them and her yesterday.
2) They and us visited the museum before Sara told her and I not to go home.
3) He and they went shopping with her and him.
4) Don’t shut the door on him and we three travelers.
5) (Replace all names with singular pronouns in the following:) Steve and Shannon took over for Michelle and Cara.
COMMON ERROR #2 – Who is this ‘myself’ person?
Even if problem #1 is giving you difficulty, here’s an easy problem to stamp out – using “myself” as a cop out when you don’t know which pronoun to use (the same goes for himself, herself & themselves). For example, “They visited Marie and myself last week.” What’s more, lose the notion that this makes one sound more sophisticated or intelligent, like people who insist on pronouncing the silent ‘t’ in ‘often’ (Another irritating and widespread error) It doesn’t. Myself is a reflexive pronoun, and should be used to indicate stress (I myself answered the call) or a reflection on self-identity (I am just being myself). As a matter of fact, you should NEVER have a sentence that includes “myself” that does not include the subject “I” – this is the definition of a reflexive pronoun (which you may know from foreign language reflexive verbs). Oh, and my apologies for your future frustration at the frequency with which you will notice this mistake for the rest of your lives.
IMPROVE THE FOLLOWING
1) The criminals robbed both Harold and myself.
2) Wanda and herself went to the bookstore
3) I offered to give themselves the cantaloupe. (Do you see how stupid these sound yet?)
4) Use myself correctly in an original sentence
5) Use, for the last time in your life, “myself” incorrectly (doesn’t it feel good to be rid of this?)
COMMON ERROR #3 – Shape-shifting (almost always from singular to plural)
This is one of the most common pronoun mistakes out there. It is grammatically incorrect to say, “A police officer must always keep an eye on their gun” or “I’m going to miss you like a child misses their blanket” (she may be Fergielicious, but she’s also grammarevolting). This problem has a very simple root – avoiding the clunky, yet technically accurate “his or her”. This problem pops up frequently with singular subjects that mutate into plural pronouns, like the above examples. Two less common variations of the shape-shifting pronoun are the transformation of “I” into “you” (“I hate it when you trip and fall over” – unless you are being compassionate, this is not right) or the assumption that everybody is a man (“A teacher gets to take his work home with him every day” … sorry feminists, but this “all-male” assumption is becoming more acceptable in common usage – see below). This last one is simple to fix – make the subject plural, since you are speaking generally anyway (“Teachers get to take their work home with them”). When in doubt, one can always fall back on using the genderless singular, ‘one’. But one must admit that this can make one seem pretentious, mustn’t one?
CORRECT THE FOLLOWING (there may be more than one way to fix these)
1) A medical student must recite the Hippocratic Oath before they can become a doctor.
2) As I ventured about, you could see that everything was a mess
3) When a woman finds she is lost in an alleyway, they often get nervous.
4) A baseball player has to know that they can’t ask for too much money.
5) A person cannot choose [their, his] own parents. (which is right?)
PLEASE NOTE – with the third rule – the one that assumes that everybody is a man – grammarians are split. Yes, it is technically correct to say “Somebody left his or her plates in the sink,” but if you have to use this clunky “his or her” more than once in a paragraph, it really starts to sound awful. Some people think it should be avoided at all times. And while it would be presumptuous to say “Somebody left his plates in the sink,” (women can be slobs too) this really comes down to choosing the lesser of two evils: Should I speak stiffly, but correctly (his or her dishes) or bend a grammatical rule for the sake of style (his dishes)? Most choose the latter.