1. Pronouns

2. What’s wrong with this sentence? One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if you have not dined well.

3. What’s wrong with this sentence? One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if you have not dined well. The sentence begins with the singular indefinite pronoun one and then switches to the second person singular, you. Note: an indefinite pronoun is one that does not have a specific antecedent.

4. Corrected: One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. or You cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if you have not dined well. How does the difference in pronouns in this sentence affect the tone?

5. Pronouns must agree with one another and with their antecedents in number (singular or plural) and viewpoint (1st, 2nd, or 3rd person).

6. SingularPlural First Person I, me, my, minewe, us, our, ours Second Person you, your, yours Third Person he, him, his she, her, hers it, its one, one’s they, them, their, theirs Pronouns

7. Gender in Pronouns Traditionally, using he, him, or his was acceptable when the gender of a person was unknown. Today, this is not quite as acceptable. “I hope I am not giving away professional secrets if I say that a novelist’s chief desire is to be as unconscious as possible. He has to induce in himself a state of perpetual lethargy.” How else does Woolf’s choice of the pronoun he support her point?

8. Gender in Pronouns You may use he or she, him or her, his or hers “I hope I am not giving away professional secrets if I say that a novelist’s chief desire is to be as unconscious as possible. He or she has to induce in himself or herself a state of perpetual lethargy.” How do you feel about the effect of this change on the flow of the sentence?

9. Gender in Pronouns You may also change to the unspecified plural noun “I hope I am not giving away professional secrets if I say that a novelist’s chief desire is to be as unconscious as possible. They have to induce in themselves a state of perpetual lethargy.” BUT, ONLY use THEY for a singular antecedent in THIS CIRCUMSTANCE! And keep in mind that this still isn’t always accepted as correct.

10. Gender in Pronouns The last option in large portions of writing is to switch back and forth between male and female pronouns, but sometimes this approach causes readers to lose track.

11. Make sure your pronoun usage is consistent! But as long as you maintain a consistent viewpoint, selecting which viewpoint to use is a rhetorical decision. An informal essay that draws on the writer’s personal experience would use _______________________. An informal article or speech that wants to directly address readers would use __________________________.