Pronouns are words that take the place of nouns. They are extremely useful little words;
without them, our communications would be clumsy and difficult to follow. Consider the following passage: ‘Jennifer Jameson has the draft contract. Peter Denton will ask Jennifer Jameson to give the draft contract to Sarah MacDonald so that Sarah MacDonald can check the draft contract to make sure that Jennifer Jameson has not overlooked any errors in the draft contract.’ This is very long-winded and difficult. How much simpler it is when you use pronouns: ‘Jennifer Jameson has the draft contract.I will askherto giveittoyouso thatyoucan make sure thatshehas not overlooked any errors init.’
Pronouns
There are seven kinds of pronoun:
G personal pronouns, which relate to particular people or things, like ‘I’, ‘her’, ‘it’
G possessive pronouns, which indicate possession, like ‘his’, ‘her’, ‘my’, ‘our’, ‘your’
G reflexive pronouns, which are used when the object of the verb is the same as the subject:
‘himself’, ‘myself’, ‘themselves’, as in ‘Peter gave himself a substantial pay rise.’
G demonstrative pronouns, which point something out, like ‘this’, ‘that’, ‘those’
G relative pronouns, which introduce clauses that qualify a preceding noun or pronoun, like
‘which’ and ‘that’ in the above passage
G interrogative pronouns, which ask questions, like ‘who?’, ‘what?’, ‘which?’
G indefinite pronouns, like ‘anybody’, ‘somebody’
There are four common errors in the use of pronouns.
G Ambiguous use. You must ensure that your use of pronouns is not ambiguous. If it is, then either use the appropriate nouns instead or find another way of expressing yourself. A common ambiguity is this kind of thing: ‘John Smith talked to James Jones about his letter.’ Whose letter is it – John Smith’s or James Jones’s?
G Incorrect use of the relative pronoun. Because it takes the place of a noun, a pronoun can usually be the subject of a sentence. The only exception is the relative pronoun.
Because relative pronouns introduceclausesnot sentences (see under ‘Phrases and Clauses’ below), you cannot start a sentence with one. It is therefore wrong to say,
‘Thank you for your order. Which is being processed today.’ ‘Which’ should introduce a clause, which is part of a sentence, not the sentence itself. So the passage should read, ‘Thank you for your order, which is being processed today.’
G Confusion over the use of subjective and objective pronouns. Some people have a problem with the different forms of the personal pronoun. There are two forms:
subjective and objective. ‘I’, ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘they’ are subjective forms. As their name suggests, they are used when they are the subject of a sentence. ‘Me’, ‘him’, ‘her’,
‘them’ are objective forms, and are used when they are the object of a sentence. Most people can differentiate between them when using them on their own, but many get into difficulties when they use them in combination. For example, can you see what is wrong with these sentences?
– Our Sales Manager and me will call on you tomorrow.
– The Managing Director would like to see you and I at ten o’clock tomorrow.
They both use the wrong form of the pronoun. In the first, the pronoun is part of the subject, so it should be in the subjective form. And in the second, the pronoun is part of the object, so it should be in the objective. The best way to ensure that you use the correct form is to use the pronoun on its own. So in the first sentence you would drop
‘Our Sales Manager’. What would you say if you were calling on the client on your own? You would say, ‘I will call ...’ Similarly in the second sentence, if it were just you the Managing Director wanted to see, you would say, ‘The Managing Director would like to see me ...’ So you should use the same forms in combination with the accompanying nouns.
G The pronoun ‘none’. This is a word that causes some difficulty. It is short for ‘not one’, and is therefore singular. So you should say, ‘None of the Committee’s decisions was acceptable to the Board’, not ‘None of the Committee’s decisionswereacceptable ...’ It is now quite common to see ‘none’ used with a plural verb, but there are still some people who object to this usage, and it is therefore better to use the correct form.
Verbs
Verbs are ‘doing’ or ‘being’ words. They tell us what the subject of a sentence does or did, is or was. As we saw in Chapter 4, every sentence must have a verb. There are two common problems involving verbs.
G Splitting the infinitive. The infinitive is the ‘to’ form of the verb: ‘to write’, ‘to meet’, ‘to complain’. The rules of grammar say that you should not split an infinitive – in other words, nothing should come between ‘to’ and the rest of the verb. You should therefore not say, ‘We need to clearly identify our key markets.’ In trying to avoid
splitting the infinitive, there are three places you can put the word that is splitting it:
before the infinitive, after the infinitive and at the end of the sentence. When you are faced with a split infinitive, try all three to see which sounds best:
– We need clearly to identify our key markets.
– We need to identify clearly our key markets.
– We need to identify our key markets clearly.
In this case the third version sounds better, but there will be other sentences in which one of the other positions would be better.
However, you should not be too dogmatic. Split infinitives are becoming more common, and although you will find that in most cases your sentences will read more smoothly if you avoid them, there will be times, especially in longer sentences, when it will actually soundlessclumsy if you split an infinitive. Take for example, the following sentence: ‘We appear to deliberately avoid making our clients comfortable while they are waiting to see a partner.’ If you try the three ‘non-split’ versions you will probably conclude that, although putting ‘deliberately’ before the infinitive may be the best of the three options, the sentence actually reads better as it is.
G Using a singular verb with a plural subject and vice versa. As we have seen, the verb and its subject must agree in number, so a singular subject must take a singular verb, and a plural subject a plural verb. This may seem obvious, and few people would make the mistake of saying something like ‘I were in a meeting’ or ‘Peter and Janet was asked to make a presentation.’ However, there are pitfalls. First, the adjectives
‘each’ and ‘every’ have the effect of making nouns singular. So although you would say, ‘All directors are entitled to a share option’ you would say, ‘Everydirectoris entitled to a share option.’ The same applies when the subject is two nouns: ‘All directors and managers are entitled ...’, but ‘Everydirector and managerisentitled ...’
So even though you would expect the subject to be plural because it consists of two nouns, the word ‘every’ makes it singular.
Another problem is caused by clauses and phrases that are in parenthesis (written almost as an aside). Although you would write ‘The desk and the computer are to be moved to the new office’, since there are two nouns and the subject is therefore plural, you should write ‘The desk, together with the computer,isto be moved ...’ Here, because the reference to the computer is enclosed by commas, it means that it is an aside, almost an afterthought. The subject is actually just the desk, so the verb is singular.
A similar problem arises when the subject and the verb are separated. It can then be difficult to see what the subject actually is. Look at these two sentences:
– The aim of the consultant’s thoroughly researched and clearly explained proposals are to make the company more productive.
– My expenses, including subsistence allowance, is attached.
In the first sentence, the subject is ‘aim’ not ‘proposals’, so the verb should be singular.
The confusion arises because the noun nearest to the verb is ‘proposals’. And in the second, the subject is ‘expenses’, not ‘allowance’, so the verb should be plural. If you are in doubt, you can check what the subject is by saying ‘what?’ before the predicate.
So in the second sentence, the answer to the question ‘What is attached?’ is ‘my expenses’, which is plural.