Look at the sentences below. What can you see wrong?
Fred was hungry. Fred ate an apple and then Fred felt better.
Grammatically, the sentence is fine but there is a lot of repetition of the noun Fred!
Nouns (naming words) are a really important part of writing but using them over and over again can make our writing repetitive and dull. For this reason, we need to use pronouns.
Pronouns can be used in place of nouns. Let's see if we can improve our writing with pronouns.
Fred was hungry. He ate an apple and then he felt better.
That's more like it! The reader knows we are still thinking about Fred, but we've avoided saying his name too many times.
Just as there are different types of noun, there are different type of pronouns. Different pronouns do different jobs. Let's have a look at a few.
Personal Pronouns People, things, places I gave him a sweet. |
Possessive Pronouns Ownership The ball is mine. |
Relative Pronouns Link parts of sentences Sally is the person who drew the picture. |
Reflexive Pronouns Refer back to earlier noun/pronoun She is proud of herself. |
Demonstrative Pronouns Refer to specific noun/pronoun This is your chair. |
I you he she it we they me him her us them |
mine my yours your his hers its our ours their theirs
|
who whom whose which that what
|
myself yourself himself herself itself ourselves themselves |
this that these those |
Don't worry if you can't remember them all, or the names of the different types! You just need to get used to using them, and you can come back to this page at any time by clicking on the red help button on the screen.
Let's get started.