General English

Pronouns: Types, Cases and Common Rules

A pronoun replaces a noun so that a sentence does not repeatedly use the same name or noun. Exam questions often test case, agreement, relative pronouns and reflexive forms.

1. Personal pronoun cases

Person	Subject	Object	Possessive
1st singular	I	me	my / mine
2nd singular	you	you	your / yours
3rd singular	he/she/it	him/her/it	his/her/hers/its
1st plural	we	us	our / ours
3rd plural	they	them	their / theirs

2. Major pronoun types

Personal pronouns: refer directly to people/things.
Interrogative pronouns: ask questions, such as who, whose, which, what.
Relative pronouns: connect a noun to a relative clause, such as who, whom, which, whose.
Demonstrative pronouns: point out things, such as this, that, these, those.
Indefinite pronouns: refer generally, such as someone, everyone, none.
Distributive pronouns: consider members one at a time, such as either, neither.
Reciprocal pronouns: each other and one another.
Reflexive pronouns: myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves.

3. Objective case after certain words

The supplied notes specifically teach the objective form after but, except, a preposition and let.

Correct

Everyone laughed but me. / None attended except him. / Let us go.

Me, him and us are objective forms.

4. One → one’s

When one is the subject in the impersonal sense, the corresponding possessive form in the notes is one’s.

Example

One should keep one’s promise.

Avoid switching unexpectedly to “his” or “her” when “one” is the chosen subject.

5. Reciprocal pronouns

The source notes teach each other for two people and one another for more than two.

Examples

The couple love each other. / People in the society help one another.

This distinction is a useful exam-oriented rule from the source notes.

6. Relative pronouns: who, whom, which, whose

Who is used for a person functioning as the subject of the relative clause.
Whom is used for a person functioning as the object in the source examples.
Which is used for things/animals in the examples.
Whose expresses possession or association.

Compare

The boy who works here is my friend. / The boy whom you praised is my friend.

In the first sentence, who is the doer of “works”; in the second, whom is the object of “praised”.

7. Reflexive pronouns

Reflexive pronouns refer back to the subject. The supplied notes highlight verbs such as enjoy, apply, adapt, resign, cut, kill, introduce, hurt, eat, absent, avail, cheat in patterns where a reflexive pronoun is used.

Examples

They enjoyed themselves. / She absented herself from the meeting.

The reflexive refers back to the subject.

Study note: This lesson is an expanded teaching version of the supplied resource topic. Examples and explanations are written for learning and exam preparation; the brief source notes are not reproduced verbatim.