Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Gruesday--Intro to the Pesky Pronoun


Welcome to week three of Gruesome Grammar Tuesday!
In this week’s Gruesday post I am going to be discussing the pronoun. In fact I am going to split this post up, because—believe or not—the pronoun is more complicated and pesky than even those nosy nouns. So this week I am just going to talk about the basic definitions of the pronoun and describe how it is used in most instances.
What is a pronoun?
-          Pronouns are used in place of nouns (or sometimes another pronoun) to avoid repetition and make sentences easier to understand.
o   Ex.—The mother told the mother’s daughter that the mother was going to make spaghetti for the mother’s daughter for dinner. –There are no pronouns in the sentence and it makes the sentence very hard to follow.
Here is the same sentence using pronouns.—The mother told her daughter that she was going to make spaghetti for her for dinner.
-          A pronoun may also stand in the place of an understood noun.
o   Ex. If a person has been named before-hand, then the sentence—Mary where did you put the fishing pole?—Can just be cut down to—Where did you put the fishing pole?
-          A pronoun can also stand in as an indefinite it.
o   Ex. It is way too cold.—it is the indefinite and is understood to mean the temperature (of something).
According to The Chicago Manual of Style 16th edition, there are six classes of pronouns.
1.       personal
2.       demonstrative
3.       interrogative
4.       relative
5.       indefinite
6.       adjective
Next week will be all about personal pronouns. Don't forget to come back and see how pesky pronouns can get!

This post would not have been possible without:

The Chicago Manual of Style 16th edition
and

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