Pronouns take the place of nouns. For example, Sherry went to the store to buy some groceries. Then, she went to the gas station and back home.
Sherry is the noun. She is the personal pronoun. It takes the place of the noun, Sherry. That way you don't have to use the word Sherry all the time. You need to use pronouns to break the repetition of the noun. However, you want to vary the words.
For example, in dialogue, you wouldn't want to continue using the personal pronouns of more than one person.
Sherry went to the store. She met Kari there. "Hi Kari. How are you?"
"I'm okay. What about you?" She asked
"I'm doing great. How about getting together sometime?"
"Sounds good," she replied
"Would you like to go to a movie?"
"Sure."
"Okay. Give me a call sometime soon," she said
"I will," she replied.
When the conversation keeps going, readers tend to lose track of who's talking. This dialogue is confusing because you may get confused as to who is speaking. In this type of situation, you want to vary the nouns and pronouns. Occasionally, you need to use the nouns so readers will know who is speaking immediately instead of having to go back to the beginning of the dialogue. It becomes even more difficult when you are using more than two people and using pronouns all the time or not saying who is speaking.
Other Pronouns
Other pronouns are she, he, it, him, her, himself, herself, them, themselves, etc.
These pronouns all stand for the nouns.
The word it is a pronoun that stands for a common noun such as in these sentences. The cat liked to play with a ball of yarn. The cat ran after it has it rolled across the floor. The word it stands for the noun, yarn.
Exercises
Here are some exercises to give you some practice in recognizing nouns and pronouns.
Part One - For each of these nouns, write a pronoun. Be careful. Some of the nouns are plural. Therefore you need a plural pronoun. For example: There were several cars in the parking lot. Most of them were small. Noun - cars Pronouns - them. You have to use the word them in place of the plural word cars.
1. Bob -
2. Carol -
3. toy -
4. cat -
5. dog -
6. house -
7. balls -
8. girls -
9. boys -
10. Tom -
Now that you have finished this exercise, do you think you understand about nouns and pronouns? The answers will appear next time along with another article about adjectives.
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