Pronouns (Part 1)

Let's look at this paragraph :

"Jennifer Lawrence is a famous actress. Jennifer Lawrence acted in many movies. Jennifer Lawrence is best known for her role as Katniss Everdeen in Hunger Games. Jennifer Lawrence..."

If I were to describe who Jennifer Lawrence is and if I were to continue to write 'Jennifer Lawrence' in every sentence I write, wouldn't it sound repetitive and kind of redundant? By the way 'Jennifer Lawrence' is not a short name either. There's got to be a way to address 'Jennifer Lawrence' better.

Luckily, we have pronouns! 

Pronouns are exactly the words we need to replace the many-letter nouns like 'Jennifer Lawrence'. Otherwise, our fingers will be sore just writing her name. Now, the pronoun we can use here is 'She' so let's replace the 2nd Jennifer Lawrence onwards with the pronoun 'She'.

''Jennifer Lawrence is a famous actress. She acted in many roles. She is best known as Katniss Everdeen in Hunger Games. She...''

Sounds better right? And it's much shorter too!

'She' is just one of the many pronouns in English. It's only used to refer to a girl or woman. What about the others? Let's look at the table below:

• He - to refer to a boy or man
• It - to refer to an animal or non living thing
• We - to refer to a group of people including oneself
• They - to refer to a group of people other than oneself
• You - to refer to the person you're talking to
• I - well, that's you yourself!

These are the most basic form of pronouns, called personal pronouns. There are other forms, which we shall ponder in the next post. Stay tuned!