like to talk to you about how to use
pronouns but to start we need to
understand what a pronoun is the short
answer to that is that a pronoun stands
in for a noun they fall under three
categories there's the personal pronoun
the possessive and the reflexive give
you an example of each let's say my name
is Stephanie my personal pronoun would
be I my possessive pronoun would be mine
and my reflexive pronoun would be myself
and just so you know reflexive basically
means like a mirror so in a sentence a
reflexive pronoun like myself will
reflect off of another noun or pronoun
that means the same thing to give you
more examples personal pronoun might be
you your and yourself so as you can see
people have pronouns but things also
have pronouns as well and that would be
it so for example Central Park in New
York City would be you would refer to it
as it so in the spring
Central Park has beautiful flowers or it
has beautiful flowers one word of
warning about using pronouns is that
sometimes you can have what we call
pronoun confusion in your writing if you
use too many pronouns the reader might
have a hard time understanding who
you're referring to
let me give you an example
you might see a sentence that says he
bought an ice cream cone for him in this
sentence we have two pronouns he and him
but it's not quite clear who he and him
are this happens a lot for rioters we
might introduce our characters at the
beginning of a chapter or a sentence and
then go on to refer to them only by
pronouns and our readers get confused
about what our characters are doing so
in this case you can clarify by getting
rid of the pronouns and actually using
the nouns like you might say Kyle bought
an ice cream cone for his brother much
clearer sentence now we can visualize
who the characters are and one more note
about pronouns the reason that we use
them is because they can they can help
our sentences be much more interesting
it can be cumbersome to constantly refer
to people by their names or by their
proper nouns I have a friend who is a
doctor in New Zealand and he said that
they tend to not use pronouns very much
and so when he's taking in a patient the
nurse might say to the patient Matt is
going to take your blood pressure and
then Matt is going to give you some
oxygen and then Matt is going to leave
the room and then that's going to come
back in an hour and see how you're doing
you can see how that sentence becomes
incredibly clunky and that's why
pronouns can really be our friends they
can make our sentences much more smooth
much more readable so this is just a
little general primer on how to use
pronouns in your writing