Tag Archives: Pronouns

Between you and me or between you and I? Prepositions and pronouns

It’s actually very simple: there are some pronouns that we use after prepositions, and some that we don’t. In technical terms, prepositions have an object, and we use the dative form of pronouns to show this. Now, since I won’t be explaining either objects or dative forms for a while yet, this may not make

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Adjective or pronoun: that tricky distinction

The English language is constantly changing. New words are created and old words fall into disuse. Australians start to speak and write differently from Canadians; New Zealanders use the language differently from Singaporeans. And to cope with these changes, grammar rules themselves change. For speakers of some other languages, the fact that the ‘rules’ of

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Yellow, red, orange and blue shipping containers stacked on top and beside each other

Adjectives: an introduction

Adjectives have a simple use: they describe nouns, and also pronouns and other adjectives. A simple definition is that adjectives are ‘describing words’. If we think of nouns as containers of meaning, adjectives help to give extra definition to our meaning. We can talk about a container, for example, or a yellow container or a

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Pronouns: reflexive pronoun use and Microsoft Word’s grammar checker

To start with, let’s remember what reflexive pronouns are. They are what I dubbed the ‘selfie’ pronouns: myself, ourselves, yourself, yourselves, himself, herself, itself, themselves and – a bit controversially – themself (for more on this particular pronoun, see the post on gender-neutral pronouns). We use them when we want to refer back to the

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Pronouns: ‘that’ and ‘who’ and people and animals

Use ‘who’ and ‘whom’ for people (and for words that describe people) This seems obvious but more and more writers are using that as the relative pronoun to describe people. I have two theories why this happening: partly because people are worried about misusing either who or whom and look for another word to use

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Pronouns – the difference between ‘who’ and ‘whom’ (cheat’s version)

Does the difference between ‘who’ and ‘whom’ really matter? No man is an island, entire of itself: every man … is a part of the main … any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in all mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. John

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Pronouns: the that/which problem (and understanding your MS Word grammar checker)

Relative pronouns We use relative pronouns – that, which, who and whom – to join sentences, which refer to the same noun, together. (In this post, I’ll look at the difference between that and which, and next week I’ll look at who and whom.) For example: We use relative pronouns to join sentences together. The

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Pronouns: he or she? The gender-neutral problem

Pronouns provide a quick, convenient way to refer to an earlier noun without repeating it (as it does in this sentence). But there is one problem: what pronoun can we use for a single person when we don’t know the person’s sex, given that pronouns indicate sex? For example, consider this sentence: The child paddles

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