Pronouns: Calling in the Professionals

My husband tells me he thinks of pronouns as “pro nouns” – professional nouns. They’re the ones you call to stand in for the regular nouns.

You need to understand how pronouns work because they account for a whopping 17% of the test questions in the Writing section. Of all the pronoun questions, the majority of them (43%)  are pronoun-noun agreement issues, 30% of them are ambiguous pronouns, and 16% of them are pronoun case issues. [NOTE: this statistics were pulled from the pre-2016 SAT tests.]

Let’s start with pronoun agreement issues.

Pronoun be thy name

What are pronouns? They include:

• • I, you, he, she, it, they,we, one, your
  • me, him, her, one, us, them, their
  • these, those, which, this, that

Would a rose by any other name would smell as sweet? (Only if the pronoun agrees)

Just like subjects and verbs need to agree, so do nouns and pronouns. Here’s an example from Erica Meltzer’s excellent book, The Ultimate Guide to SAT Grammar.

“Katie dribbled the ball and then she shot them at the basket.”

This is a mismatch between the singular noun “ball” and the plural pronoun “them.” “Them” should be changed to “it.”

Another example of a mismatched noun and pronoun could be

“Katie dribbled the ball and then they shot it at the basket.”

This is a mismatch between the singular noun Katie and the plural pronoun “they.” “They” should be changed to “she.”

 

Let’s see how the SAT tests this. This is question 20 on page 659 in the Blue Book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ask these questions:

1. 1. Are there any underlined pronouns?
      Yes. Choice C has “it.”
   2. For whom [why did I use ‘whom’ instead of ‘who’?] or what is it standing in?
      Hmm. It could be the noun “microorganisms” or “crabs.”  But the sentence is talking about crabs feeding, therefore it must refer to crabs.
   3. Does it match?
      Nope. Crabs is plural therefore “it” should be “they.”

 

Here’s another (hard) one. This is from page 534 in the Blue Book.

 

 

 

 

Ask these questions:

1. 1.  Are there any underlined pronouns?
      Yes. “Their” is a pronoun.
   2. For whom or what is it standing in?
      “Their” is referring to the gecko.
   3. Does it match?
      Nope. “Their” is plural and “gecko” is singular. “Their”should be “its.” [Why didn’t I use ‘it’s?”]

 

Here is one more example from page 838 in the Blue Book.

 

Ask these questions:

1. 1. Are there any underlined pronouns?
      Yes. Choice D has “your.”
   2. For whom or what is it standing in?
      “Your” is referring to “people.”
   3. Does it match?
      “People” is plural – therefore the pronoun must be “they.”

The universal 1+1 rule

“You” and “one” are also special. They are used generically or universally when talking about everyone.

For example, you could say,

“One should eat fewer [why did I use fewer instead of less?]  calories if one wants to lose weight.”

Or you could say,

“You should eat fewer calories if you want to lose weight.”

But you can’t combine them and say,

“One should eat fewer calories if you want to lose weight.”

Remember,

• • 1+1
  • one+one
  • you+you

Next Steps

Learn about ambiguous pronouns, pronoun case, or try your hand at some SAT pronoun questions.

Image credit: Sylvar on Flickr