All About Pronouns

Author: Indigo Curnick

Date: 2026-08-01

Introduction

A pronoun is a word used to take the place of a noun or another pronoun e.g. I, you, him, this, who. The noun or pronoun for which a pronoun stands is called the antecedent (from antecēdere, to go before). In the sentence "John goes to school but he does not study" the noun John is the antecedent of he.

Most people are likely familiar with the personal pronouns, which we shall of course cover, but fewer people are consciously aware of all the many other kinds of pronouns. While a native English speaker has no trouble using them fluently in sentences, they may not even be aware that these extended pronoun categories are indeed pronouns. In this blog we will cover all of the main pronouns used in English.

Personal Pronouns

Personal pronouns represent people or things. They can be of several persons and be either singular or plural. There is a set list of personal pronouns:

In the table above, the Nom., Gen., Obj. refer to the case of the pronoun. Case is how the pronoun is used. Nom. or nominative is when the pronoun is the subject of the sentence. Gen. or genitive when the pronoun is possessive. Obj. or objective is when the pronoun is the object of the sentence. Some examples to elucidate the difference:

• I went to the fair. (I in nominative)
• That's my pen. (my in genitive)
• Give it to me. (me in objective)

English used to use thou for the singular second person pronoun and ye or you for the plural second person pronoun. However, this distinction is now gone and you is used for both singular and plural. It isn't known exactly why English dropped thou and ye but it does leave English a little less precise in this domain.

Most authors do not include the third epicene like me, but I argue strongly for it. The third epicene is more commonly known as singular they. First, Shakespeare used the singular they:

‘Tis meet that some more audience than a mother — Since nature makes them partial — should o’erhear the speech.

I have a rule: "good enough for Shakespeare, good enough for me".

More importantly, the phrase he or she is grating and clunky.

• Each team leader is responsible for his or her team.

Is just sooooooo clunky. Sometimes it has been suggested to use he as the "default" pronoun to clean this up (some, notably feminist authors, have counter-suggested using she for this case):

• Each team leader is responsible for his team.
• Each team leader is responsible for her team.

But the problem with this is it misses the point: we either don't know the gender, the gender groups are mixed, or the gender is irrelevant in the case. The epicene pronoun clears all of this up:

• Each team leader is responsible for their own team.

Not only does this roll of the tongue so much better, furthermore it communicates more information; gender is irrelevant to the responsibility of the team leader.

Reflexive Pronouns

Reflexive pronouns have two uses. The primary is to refer to the same entity as the subject of a sentence:

• They behave themselves for a change
• You'll hurt yourself

The secondary use is to give emphasis to a noun phrase:

• She herself spoke to me
• He wrote to me himself

You could also just write

• She spoke to me
• He wrote to me

The full table of reflexive pronouns is:

There is also some debate around the reflexive form of the epicene pronoun. Some authors who suggest using the epicene advise keeping the themselves form in the reflexive. Here however I take the "in for a penny, in for a pound" approach - it's a singular pronoun, so we might as well use the -self form which is clearly established in the table. Themself may be considered "not a word", but neither was assassination, bump, generous, or suspicious until Shakespeare invented them. There is clearly a need for this word!

Relative Pronoun

Relative pronouns introduce relative clauses. They have the following cases:

Confusing who and whom is easily done! Even now, sometimes I have to stop and check! Thankfully, I wrote a handy blog on which one to use here.

There are two main uses of the relative clause introduced by the relative pronoun. The first is to help identify the subject (with the relative pronoun in italics and the relative clause in bold (technically the relative pronoun is part of the relative clause but this is a bit cleaner to read)):

• That bird that we fed earlier has returned.
• The man who broke into the house has been arrested.
• The nice lady who bakes cakes has lived there a long time.

The second use is to tell us some additional information about the subject:

• His car, which is only two days old, broke down again.
• Alice, whose brother is an economist, is also studying economics at university.
• The man, whom I needed to apologise to, is also a fisher.

Notice how when we help identify the subject we do not use a comma pair. When we give additional information we wrap the relative clause in a comma pair. In either case, if we removed the entire relative clause (commas included) then the sentence still makes sense grammatically (though understanding what the subject is might be tricky):

• That bird has returned.
• The man has been arrested.
• His car broke down again.
• Alice is also studying economics at university.

It is also possible to sometimes omit the pronoun which is called the zero (relative) pronoun. We can only omit the pronoun when it is the object; if it is a subject it must remain. Here's some examples of times we can omit the pronoun with their zero pronoun equivalents:

Here's some instances where we can not omit the relative pronoun:

Interrogative Pronouns

An interrogative pronoun is used to ask a question:

• Who is walking in the garden?
• What was that?
• Whom did you see?

The primary interrogative pronouns in English are: who, whose, whom, what and which. Whom is the objective case of the (nominative case) who; while whose is the genitive case. What and which do not have different cases.

There are also some secondary interrogative pronouns which can be formed by adding -ever or -soever to the end of the standard interrogative pronouns:

The -ever and -soever interrogative pronouns are used exactly the same as their base form, but they add additional emphasis and surprise. The -soever form adds a certain old-time charm.

For example

• Who is your favourite pop singer?
• Whom have they appointed?
• Whose towel is that?

Which and what have only the one form.

Which can either be personal or non-personal

• Which is your sister?
• Which of these drinks do you prefer?

What is usually only non-personal:

• What do you want?

Demonstrative Pronouns

A demonstrative pronoun points out an object definitely. There are four, which vary by number (singular and plural) and by proximity (near or far)

Some examples:

• This is for you
• That doesn't make sense
• These are tasty
• You may take those

Indefinite Pronouns

The indefinite pronouns refer to the presence or absence of quantity. It is by far the largest set of pronouns:

• Many have replied to the advertisement and several have been interviewed
• You take one and I'll take the other
• No one was absent today
• More will be arriving later
• You can have both
• Either will do for me
• There are fewer here today
• Everybody was pleased with the speech

There are two common sets, the some-set and the any-set:

Reciprocal Pronouns

There are two reciprocal pronouns, each with a genitive

• Each other, each other's
• One another, one another's

Each other is used when there are two parties. One another is used when there are three or more parties involved. For example,

• My brother and I borrowed one another's clothes
• The partners trusted each other completely

Conclusion

We've covered the major pronoun categories of English. While the list can seem daunting at first, if you are a native English speaker, you've likely already mastered all of these in practice. Once you have done that, understanding the theory is only a small amount of work.

References

Murray, L. (1859 (1795)) English Grammar Adapted to the Different Classes of Learners. With an Appendix, Containing Rules and Observations, for Assisting the More Advanced Students to Write with Perspicuity and Accuracy. John Murphy & Co.

Greenbaum, S., Nelson, G. (2002) An Introduction to English Grammar. Pearson Education Limited

Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., Svartik, J. (1985) A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. Longman.