Personal Pronouns : Part Four — Miscellaneous, Conclusion and References

There is an unusu­al pro­noun that I have so far avoid­ed men­tion­ing, one.

Declen­sion of One

Sub­ject	Object	Pos­ses­sive Adjec­tive	Pos­ses­sive Pro­noun	Reflex­ive	Num­ber	Gen­der
one	one	one’s	one’s	one­self	vari­able	neu­tral

One is odd because it acts for a pro­noun much like a pro­noun acts for a noun, but which pro­noun it is stand­ing in for is not always clear.
What can one say to that?
Depend­ing on the con­text one could be replac­ing I or you or even both of us. Yet it isn’t as ego-cen­tered as I, nor as direct as you. So although it has a stuffy, old fash­ioned feel to it, its inde­ter­mi­na­cy makes it ide­al in cer­tain sit­u­a­tions.
Con­clu­sion
Well, I think that cov­ers every­thing, and if you actu­al­ly read the whole arti­cle (well, some­one might), your prob­a­bly ask­ing “that was inter­est­ing, but what am I sup­posed to do about it?”
The answer is, what­ev­er the hell you want. This, after all, your lan­guage, for you to use, and even abuse, as you alone see fit. Always keep in mind that the goal is to com­mu­ni­cate, so you should be striv­ing to make your mes­sage as easy to under­stand as pos­si­ble. Above all else, the way you use the lan­guage should be based on informed deci­sion, not igno­rance, and hope­ful­ly with a bit of back­ground knowl­edge you’ll be more informed than ever before.
Or to put it more sim­ply: You can break the rules only if you know what they are.

Declen­sion of Var­i­ous Per­son­al Pro­nouns

Sub­ject	Object	Pos­ses­sive Adjec­tive	Pos­ses­sive Pro­noun	Reflex­ive	Num­ber	Gen­der
FIRST PERSON
I	me	my	mine	myself	sin­gu­lar	neu­tral
we	us	our	ours	our­selves	plur­al	neu­tral
SECOND PERSON
you	you	your	yours	your­self	sin­gu­lar	neu­tral
you	you	your	yours	your­self	plur­al	neu­tral
thou	thee	thy	thine	thy­self	sin­gu­lar	neu­tral
ye	you	your	yours	your­self	plur­al	neu­tral
THIRD PERSON
he	him	his	his	him­self	sin­gu­lar	mas­cu­line
she	her	her	hers	her­self	sin­gu­lar	fem­i­nine
it	it	its	its	itself	sin­gu­lar	neuter
they	them	their	theirs	them­selves	plur­al	neu­tral
he/she	him/her	his/her	his/hers	himself/herself	sin­gu­lar	neu­tral
ey	em	eir	eirs	eir­self	sin­gu­lar	neu­tral
INDEFIINITE PRONOUN
one	one	one’s	one’s	one­self	vari­able	neu­tral

Ref­er­ences
These are the sources which help me put every­thing togeth­er… I should point out that in some cas­es “help” means “I copied ver­ba­tim”, by why both­er rewrit­ing some­thing that already express­es what you want to say.
Peters, P The Cam­bridge Aus­tralian Eng­lish Style Guide (Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Press 1995)
avail­able from amazon.com
Gen­der-neu­tral Pro­noun FAQ
Mac­quar­ie Dic­tio­nary 2nd ed. (Mac­quar­ie Library 1991)
Com­mon Errors in Eng­lish
Eng­lish Gram­mar Usage and Style at Yahoo.com
Also see:
Part Zero — The prob­lem with the Eng­lish lan­guage is you!
Part One — First per­son pro­nouns
Part Two — Sec­ond per­son pro­nouns
Part Three — Third per­son pro­nouns