Tag: writing

Declen­sion of Cur­rent Third Per­son­al Pro­nouns

Sub­ject	Object	Pos­ses­sive Adjec­tive	Pos­ses­sive Pro­noun	Reflex­ive	Num­ber	Gen­der
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

Now we get to the real­ly com­pli­cat­ed sec­tion. The gen­der game. The use of third per­son per­son­al pro­nouns in Eng­lish forces the speaker/writer to con­sid­er the nat­ur­al gen­der of the per­son they are refer­ring to. Because Eng­lish pro­nouns are so firm­ly asso­ci­at­ed with nat­ur­al gen­der, the tra­di­tion­al use of mas­cu­line forms to express gener­ic human iden­ti­ty is now felt to be unfor­tu­nate and ambigu­ous, if not sex­ist.
What to do about the whole he and/or she prob­lem? Clear­ly there is a prob­lem here. All you have to do is try to tell a sto­ry about some­one with­out reveal­ing the per­sons gen­der and you will very quick­ly dis­cov­er that there is no ade­quate com­mon­ly used solu­tion.
Try fill­ing the blank in the fol­low­ing sen­tence:
Every teacher must ensure that … can do first aid.
Whether you put he or she, you seem to imply that teach­ers are all the same gen­der.
Orig­i­nal­ly he/his would have been con­sid­ered gener­ic in the fol­low­ing:
The appli­cant must demon­strate his abil­i­ty to work inde­pen­dent­ly, and how he would devel­op the unit if appoint­ed to the posi­tion.
How­ev­er for many peo­ple, this use of he/his sug­gest that women are inel­i­gi­ble for the job.
Alter­na­tives for busi­ness writ­ing:
he or she
The appli­cant must demon­strate his or her abil­i­ty to work inde­pen­dent­ly, and how he or she would devel­op the unit if appoint­ed to the posi­tion.
This spells out the fact that both sex­es are in the mind of the per­son com­mu­ni­cat­ing, and that no dis­crim­i­na­tion is intend­ed. Once or twice in a text it is alright, but it becomes cum­ber­some if used repeat­ed­ly.
he/she
The appli­cant must demon­strate his/her abil­i­ty to work inde­pen­dent­ly, and how he/she would devel­op the unit if appoint­ed to the posi­tion.
Both sex­es are recog­nised as in sec­tion 1. The slash puts the alter­na­tives more neat­ly, thought it’s rather imper­son­al. For some writ­ers the lack of oral coun­ter­parts is a con­cern.
s/he
The appli­cant must demon­strate his/her abil­i­ty to work inde­pen­dent­ly, and how s/he would devel­op the unit if appoint­ed to the posi­tion.
This again is a neat way of show­ing that both sex­es are includ­ed, thought some­thing else is need­ed for him/her.
he alter­nat­ing with she through­out the text.
The appli­cant must demon­strate his abil­i­ty to work inde­pen­dent­ly, and how she would devel­op the unit if appoint­ed to the posi­tion.
This is sug­gest­ed by some as a way of being absolute­ly even-hand­ed, but it is extreme­ly dis­con­cert­ing to the read­er. It give the impres­sion that two dif­fer­ent iden­ti­ties are being referred to, when only one is intend­ed.
it
The appli­cant must demon­strate its abil­i­ty to work inde­pen­dent­ly, and how it would devel­op the unit if appoint­ed to the posi­tion.
You can use it to refer to a baby-thought the child’s par­ents are unlike­ly to. The pro­noun can­not be used very far up in the age range and is oth­er­wise only used for ani­mals.
they
The appli­cant must demon­strate their abil­i­ty to work inde­pen­dent­ly, and how they would devel­op the unit if appoint­ed to the posi­tion.
How­ev­er this works bet­ter if the whole sen­tence is turned into a plur­al:
Appli­cants must demon­strate their abil­i­ty to work inde­pen­dent­ly, and how they would devel­op the unit if appoint­ed to the posi­tion.
It is increas­ing­ly com­mon to see they used in a sin­gu­lar case. But it still presents as sound­ing awk­ward or ungram­mat­i­cal.
you
When you apply you must demon­strate your abil­i­ty to work inde­pen­dent­ly, and how you would devel­op the unit if appoint­ed to the posi­tion.
This cre­ates a style which address­es the read­er much more direct­ly.
Avoid pro­nouns alto­geth­er and rely on abstract nouns:
The appli­cant must demon­strate an abil­i­ty to work inde­pen­dent­ly, and present plans for future devel­op­ment of the unit.
This style is very imper­son­al and detached.
Repeat the words which iden­ti­fy peo­ple, pro­vid­ed this is not too clum­sy.
The appli­cant must demon­strate an abil­i­ty to work inde­pen­dent­ly. The appli­can­t’s plan for devel­op­ing the unit should be sub­mit­ted.
Use a new gen­der free pro­noun such as Co, E, hesh, tey, ther, thon and ey:
The appli­cant must demon­strate eir abil­i­ty to work inde­pen­dent­ly, and how ey would devel­op the unit if appoint­ed to the posi­tion.
Cuts loose the sex­ist tra­di­tions embed­ded in Eng­lish, but requires some expla­na­tion, and con­cert­ed effort to imple­ment them.
As a side note, it could be argued that the changes cur­rent­ly under­go­ing they are very sim­i­lar to the ones that you went through 400 years ago, with a plur­al tak­ing of the mean­ing of a sin­gu­lar use.
That’s all well and good, but what about when telling a sto­ry? Lets try some of the dif­fer­ent approach­es.
First, they, using a plur­al as a sin­gu­lar.
Yes­ter­day evening I was at the pub with a friend of mine, Blue, we were hav­ing a drink and gen­er­al­ly catch­ing up. We were both drink­ing our usu­al, a bar­car­di and coke for me, and a VB for them.
Blue had been wait­ing for a while by the time I arrived, such that whilst I had­n’t yet fin­ished my first drink they was fin­ish­ing their third. They downed the dregs of their beer and with an “I’ve got­ta piss”, head­ed towards the toi­lets.
So there I was all by myself, in a pub full of pos­si­bil­i­ties. I scanned the room, neat­ly cat­a­logu­ing the oth­er patrons: ‘not my type’, ‘not if you paid me’, ‘cute but brain­less’, ‘cute from afar but far from cute’. There were three that fell into the ‘sex as long as I did­n’t have to take to them’ box. But that was­n’t what I was look­ing for that night so I just sat there and sipped my drink. It was at this point that the per­son stand­ing by the bar turned around and looked in my direc­tion.
They was cute, drop dead gor­geous and they was walk­ing towards me.
“Hi.”
So call­ing on all of my wit and charm I came up with the per­fect reply and said, “shup a lop da.”
To which they actu­al­ly smiled.
“I mean, I’m Jan.”
“Max,” they replied. “I know this is real­ly for­ward, but I’ve got­ta go and meet some friends in a few min­utes, so would you mind if we skipped the chit chat and just kissed?”
I blinked. Then reached my left hand behind their neck and pulled us togeth­er.
It does­n’t flow all that well, and the mix­ing of a plur­al form with sin­gu­lar feels clunky, this could be fixed by replac­ing “they was” with “they were”, but that would only add to the con­fu­sion as to how many peo­ple are actu­al­ly in the scene.
Sec­ond, one.
Yes­ter­day evening I was at the pub with a friend of mine, Blue, we were hav­ing a drink and gen­er­al­ly catch­ing up. We were both drink­ing our usu­al, a bar­car­di and coke for me, and a VB for one.
Blue had been wait­ing for a while by the time I arrived, such that whilst I had­n’t yet fin­ished my first drink one was fin­ish­ing one’s third. One downed the dregs of one’s beer and with an “I’ve got­ta piss”, head­ed towards the toi­lets.
So there I was all by myself, in a pub full of pos­si­bil­i­ties. I scanned the room, neat­ly cat­a­logu­ing the oth­er patrons: ‘not my type’, ‘not if you paid me’, ‘cute but brain­less’, ‘cute from afar but far from cute’. There were three that fell into the ‘sex as long as I did­n’t have to take to him’ box. But that was­n’t what I was look­ing for that night so I just sat there and sipped my drink. It was at this point that the per­son stand­ing by the bar turned around and looked in my direc­tion.
One was cute, drop dead gor­geous and one was walk­ing towards me.
“Hi.”
So call­ing on all of my wit and charm I came up with the per­fect reply and said, “shup a lop da.”
To which one actu­al­ly smiled.
“I mean, I’m Jan.”
“Max,” one replied. “I know this is real­ly for­ward, but I’ve got­ta go and meet some friends in a few min­utes, so would you mind if we skipped the chit chat and just kissed?”
I blinked. Then reached my left hand behind one’s neck and pulled us togeth­er.
Okay, this just plain sounds wierd, and over­ly for­mal which real­ly clash­es with the com­mon nature of the dia­logue.
Third, he/she.
Yes­ter­day evening I was at the pub with a friend of mine, Blue, we were hav­ing a drink and gen­er­al­ly catch­ing up. We were both drink­ing our usu­al, a bar­car­di and coke for me, and a VB for him/her.
Blue had been wait­ing for a while by the time I arrived, such that whilst I had­n’t yet fin­ished my first drink he/she was fin­ish­ing his/her third. He/she downed the dregs of his/her beer and with an “I’ve got­ta piss”, head­ed towards the toi­lets.
So there I was all by myself, in a pub full of pos­si­bil­i­ties. I scanned the room, neat­ly cat­a­logu­ing the oth­er patrons: ‘not my type’, ‘not if you paid me’, ‘cute but brain­less’, ‘cute from afar but far from cute’. There were three that fell into the ‘sex as long as I did­n’t have to take to him’ box. But that was­n’t what I was look­ing for that night so I just sat there and sipped my drink. It was at this point that the per­son stand­ing by the bar turned around and looked in my direc­tion.
He/she was cute, drop dead gor­geous and he/she was walk­ing towards me.
“Hi.”
So call­ing on all of my wit and charm I came up with the per­fect reply and said, “shup a lop da.”
To which he/she actu­al­ly smiled.
“I mean, I’m Jan.”
“Max,” he/she replied. “I know this is real­ly for­ward, but I’ve got­ta go and meet some friends in a few min­utes, so would you mind if we skipped the chit chat and just kissed?”
I blinked. Then reached my left hand behind his/her neck and pulled us togeth­er.
There’s a good way to break up the telling of a sto­ry, and still has sex­ist prob­lems because most peo­ple would put the he first. This option also deper­son­alis­es the sto­ry.
Fourth, it.
Yes­ter­day evening I was at the pub with a friend of mine, Blue, we were hav­ing a drink and gen­er­al­ly catch­ing up. We were both drink­ing our usu­al, a bar­car­di and coke for me, and a VB for it.
Blue had been wait­ing for a while by the time I arrived, such that whilst I had­n’t yet fin­ished my first drink it was fin­ish­ing its third. It downed the dregs of its beer and with an “I’ve got­ta piss”, head­ed towards the toi­lets.
So there I was all by myself, in a pub full of pos­si­bil­i­ties. I scanned the room, neat­ly cat­a­logu­ing the oth­er patrons: ‘not my type’, ‘not if you paid me’, ‘cute but brain­less’, ‘cute from afar but far from cute’. There were three that fell into the ‘sex as long as I did­n’t have to take to him’ box. But that was­n’t what I was look­ing for that night so I just sat there and sipped my drink. It was at this point that the per­son stand­ing by the bar turned around and looked in my direc­tion.
It was cute, drop dead gor­geous and it was walk­ing towards me.
“Hi.”
So call­ing on all of my wit and charm I came up with the per­fect reply and said, “shup a lop da.”
To which it actu­al­ly smiled.
“I mean, I’m Jan.”
“Max,” it replied. “I know this is real­ly for­ward, but I’ve got­ta go and meet some friends in a few min­utes, so would you mind if we skipped the chit chat and just kissed?”
I blinked. Then reached my left hand behind its neck and pulled us togeth­er.
Again, it does­n’t sound like I’m actu­al­ly talk­ing about peo­ple.
Fifth, use a gen­der-neu­tral pronoun,like ey.
Yes­ter­day evening I was at the pub with a friend of mine, Blue, we were hav­ing a drink and gen­er­al­ly catch­ing up. We were both drink­ing our usu­al, a bar­car­di and coke for me, and a VB for em.
Blue had been wait­ing for a while by the time I arrived, such that whilst I had­n’t yet fin­ished my first drink ey was fin­ish­ing eir third. Ey downed the dregs of eir beer and with an “I’ve got­ta piss”, head­ed towards the toi­lets.
So there I was all by myself, in a pub full of pos­si­bil­i­ties. I scanned the room, neat­ly cat­a­logu­ing the oth­er patrons: ‘not my type’, ‘not if you paid me’, ‘cute but brain­less’, ‘cute from afar but far from cute’. There were three that fell into the ‘sex as long as I did­n’t have to take to him’ box. But that was­n’t what I was look­ing for that night so I just sat there and sipped my drink. It was at this point that the per­son stand­ing by the bar turned around and looked in my direc­tion.
Ey was cute, drop dead gor­geous and ey was walk­ing towards me.
“Hi.”
So call­ing on all of my wit and charm I came up with the per­fect reply and said, “shup a lop da.”
To which ey actu­al­ly smiled.
“I mean, I’m Jan.”
“Max,” ey replied. “I know this is real­ly for­ward, but I’ve got­ta go and meet some friends in a few min­utes, so would you mind if we skipped the chit chat and just kissed?”
I blinked. Then reached my left hand behind eir neck and pulled us togeth­er.
Okay, it looks strange, very strange. Takes a bit of get­ting used to, but once over that prob­lem there isn’t any­thing much else wrong with it.
So what do you think the gen­ders of my lit­tle sto­ry actu­al­ly are… does it real­ly mat­ter?
The next big ques­tion is if your going to use gen­der neu­tral pro­nouns, which ones should you use. This is a big prob­lem. There are a lot of options to chose from, every author that’s ever tried to deal with this seems to have invent­ed there own answer. How­ev­er I’m not going to try to list all the options, that has been done before, but oth­ers more informed than me. If you inter­est­ed in more infor­ma­tion about Gen­der-neu­tral pro­nouns, check out: Gen­der-neu­tral pro­noun FAQ

Declen­sion of Gen­der-neu­tral Third Per­son­al Pro­nouns

Sub­ject	Object	Pos­ses­sive Adjec­tive	Pos­ses­sive Pro­noun	Reflex­ive	Num­ber	Gen­der
THIRD PERSON
they	them	their	theirs	them­selves	sin­gu­lar	neu­tral
one	one	one’s	one’s	one­self	sin­gu­lar	neu­tral
he/she	him/her	his/her	his/hers	himself/herself	sin­gu­lar	neu­tral
it	it	its	its	itself	sin­gu­lar	neuter
ey	em	eir	eirs	eir­self	sin­gu­lar	neu­tral

Also see:
Part Zero — The prob­lem with the Eng­lish lan­guage is you!
Part One — First per­son pro­nouns
Part Two — Sec­ond per­son pro­nouns
Part Four — Mis­cel­la­neous, Con­clu­sion and Ref­er­ences

Declen­sion of Cur­rent Sec­ond Per­son Per­son­al Pro­nouns

Sub­ject	Object	Pos­ses­sive Adjec­tive	Pos­ses­sive Pro­noun	Reflex­ive	Num­ber	Gen­der
SECOND PERSON
you	you	your	yours	your­self	sin­gu­lar	neu­tral
you	you	your	yours	your­self	plur­al	neu­tral

In times gone by Eng­lish had a clear dis­tinc­tion between sub­ject and object and between sin­gu­lar and plur­al in its sec­ond per­son pro­nouns, how­ev­er after the 1600s this usage became fuzzy and even­tu­al­ly dropped entire­ly with you tak­ing on all four roles.
While no-one seems par­tic­u­lar­ly to care (or even under­stand) about the subject/object dis­tinc­tions, Eng­lish syn­tax makes the subject/object dis­tinc­tion clear.
How­ev­er there are com­mon prob­lems with singular/plural using the same word. Don’t believe me? Con­sid­er this:
You are invit­ed to attend my birth­day.
Is such an invi­ta­tion addressed to one per­son, or a whole fam­i­ly?
You said you would let me enroll.
Is this speak­er accus­ing the poor lad behind the counter, or the insti­tu­tion?
Most of the time there are oth­er clues to guide us.
Good morn­ing class, how are you this morn­ing?
The teacher is obvi­ous­ly address­ing the class as a whole. Yet these syn­tac­tic clues are not always present, and some­times peo­ple just don’t feel that they have made it clear enough, so we see things like “you all” or “you both” and less for­mal­ly “you guys” or “you lot” and even the use of “youse/yous”.
The use of yous is not a per­fect solu­tion either, for a start it has the stig­ma of short­age of edu­ca­tion. It shows up the use of what seems to be a rule in Eng­lish (ie plur­al of a noun is formed by adding an s to the end of the word) but this is incor­rect­ly applied to a pro­noun. Com­pli­cat­ing things fur­ther, yous is not always used in a plur­al sit­u­a­tion. Regard­less the word is now in the lan­guage, and you will find it in any recent dic­tio­nary, although there is still debate about how it should be spelt.
You also gets used as an indef­i­nite pro­noun, as in:
After all that, you’d think he would com­pro­mise.
In such sen­tence you is an infor­mal sub­sti­tute for one, a pro­noun which is some­where between sec­ond and first per­son (I’ll deal with one in a lat­er sec­tion). Also writ­ers of gov­ern­ment doc­u­ments are often urged to trans­late:
All tax returns must be filed by Octo­ber 31.
into
You must file your tax return by Octo­ber 31.
Which may seem very direct, but with more use has become accept­ed.
What is espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing about all this is that Eng­lish did once have a very clear dis­tinc­tion between both singular/plural and between subject/object in its sec­ond per­son pro­nouns.

Declen­sion of Old Sec­ond Per­son Per­son­al Pro­nouns

Sub­ject	Object	Pos­ses­sive Adjec­tive	Pos­ses­sive Pro­noun	Reflex­ive	Num­ber	Gen­der
SECOND PERSON
thou	thee	thy	thine	thy­self	sin­gu­lar	neu­tral
ye	you	your	yours	your­self	plur­al	neu­tral

Now how­ev­er these pro­nouns are only found in the old trans­la­tion of the Bible (specif­i­cal­ly the King James Bible). Even in Shake­speare’s work the use of these words is not strict­ly main­tained.
A note about Ye which gets called into ser­vice for qua­si-old shop signs such as “Ye Olde Tea Shoppe”, this is not (and nev­er was) a pro­noun. The Y is an attempt to match the Old Eng­lish char­ac­ter “thorn” (bor­rowed from the runic alpha­bet, see image) which rep­re­sent­ed “th”. So Ye is sim­ply The. In Tudor hand­writ­ing and print­ing, y was used instead of th in the and a num­ber of oth­er words: that, they, this (and some­times them, their, this) to save space. It ceased to be com­mon prac­tice by the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, but it lingers in the Ye of pub and shop signs, wher­ev­er the whiff of antiq­ui­ty seems to be a com­mer­cial asset.
Cor­rect use of ye and you from the King James Bible:
Ye have not cho­sen me; I have cho­sen you.
Also exam­ples of thou and ye:
O thou of lit­tle faith.
Said by Jesus to Peter, when the dis­ci­ple seemed to be think­ing twice about his abil­i­ty to walk on water.
O ye of lit­tle faith.
Addressed to the crowd assem­bled to hear the ser­mon on the mount.
For a short while, before drop­ping from the lan­guage entire­ly thou/thee took on use for friend­ly and inti­mate address to an indi­vid­ual, while ye/you was used for neu­tral, pub­lic and more dis­tant address, to either and indi­vid­ual or a group. But this dis­tinc­tion was short-lived in Eng­lish even though still present in French, Ger­man and oth­er mod­ern Euro­pean lan­guages.
Also see:
Part Zero — The prob­lem with the Eng­lish lan­guage is you!
Part One — First per­son pro­nouns
Part Three — Third per­son pro­nouns
Part Four — Mis­cel­la­neous, Con­clu­sion and Ref­er­ences

Declen­sion of Cur­rent First Per­son 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

There isn’t much to say in this sec­tion and it is here large­ly for com­plete­ness. It is inter­est­ing to note that many peo­ple are often con­fused about the use of I/me/myself and mix them up a fair bit, even thought they would nev­er make the same errors with we/us/our­selves.
Being the sub­jec­tive (or nom­i­na­tive) form I should not be used when it is the gram­mat­i­cal object espe­cial­ly after verbs or prepo­si­tions. Instead me should be used. It is rare to make this error when the pro­noun comes imme­di­ate­ly after the verb or propo­si­tion as in:
The nurse wants me over there. She was beck­on­ing to me on the way in.
But when the pro­noun is moved away from the verb it becomes less obvi­ous that me should still be used:
The nurse wants you and me over there. She was beck­on­ing to you and me on the way in.
As a result some­times you hear:
The nurse wants you and I over there. She was beck­on­ing to you and I on the way in.
A com­mon case of this prob­lem is the phrase “between you and me”, which is often changed to “between you and I”, again both pro­nouns are the object of the phrase and while this makes no dif­fer­ence for you it demands the use of me instead of I. A phrase of the same con­struc­tion such as “between me and my dog” would nev­er pro­duce “between I and my dog” because the me is direct­ly gov­erned by between.
This is exac­er­bat­ed by the hyper­cor­rect­ing aunt who insists that one should always say “you and I” instead of “you and me”. Con­sid­er the fol­low­ing:
Jim and me left before the rest.
Here the me should be I and no one would make this error when writ­ing.
They farewelled Jim and me before the rest.
Here the me is the object and so per­fect­ly cor­rect. But a lack of under­stand­ing of the subject/object dis­tinc­tion lead to incor­rect cor­rect­ing. Not a huge prob­lem and unlike­ly to be noticed in spo­ken com­mu­ni­ca­tions but would raise eye­brows in for­mal writ­ing.
Some peo­ple feel over­ly con­scious about using me as if they are in some way attract­ing atten­tion to them­selves and replace me with myself.
This was a gift to myself from my wife.
There is no need to do this, it actu­al­ly draws more atten­tion than using the more usu­al form.
This was a gift to me from my wife.
Often these minor sorts of mess ups can be quick­ly worked out by rephras­ing the sen­tence in anoth­er per­son or in a plur­al form. Com­pare:
This was a gift to our­selves from our boss.
and
This was a gift to use from our boss.
There is also a case of peo­ple using me instead of my.
I rode around there on me bike.
This is only ever writ­ten when depict­ing dia­logue. How­ev­er in the spo­ken form it is hard to say if this is a swap­ping of the two words or a change in the pro­nun­ci­a­tion of my.
Also see:
Part Zero — The prob­lem with the Eng­lish lan­guage is you!
Part Two — Sec­ond per­son pro­nouns
Part Three — Third per­son pro­nouns
Part Four — Mis­cel­la­neous, Con­clu­sion and Ref­er­ences

Let’s face it the Eng­lish lan­guage is a mess. But then again it does do its job, peo­ple around the world are able to com­mu­ni­cate com­plex and ele­gant ideas with the use of Eng­lish. Some of the best poet­ry makes use of the strange loop holes in the lan­guage, then again so do a lot of sit­coms.
Why has our lan­guage turned out the way it did? This is com­plex due to the large num­ber of fac­tors that are involved. Fash­ion, style, social change, reli­gion, pol­i­tics, wealth, the desire for the young to have a dif­fer­ent vocab­u­lary from the old, all of these and many more are fac­tors that influ­ence the evo­lu­tion of a lan­guage. The lan­guage itself is not alive, but it is used to express the thoughts, desires, ideas and dreams of liv­ing beings and so can be eas­i­ly anthro­po­mor­phised.
The end result (cur­rent­ly) of all these dif­fer­ent fac­tors pulling and push­ing on the lan­guage is that Eng­lish lacks a cohe­sive struc­ture, instead hav­ing many dif­fer­ent and con­tra­dic­to­ry rules. This does not make it a bet­ter or worse lan­guage than any oth­er, just dif­fi­cult to use well.
A good exam­ple of the com­pli­ca­tions are the per­son­al pro­nouns. What am I talk­ing about? Basi­cal­ly a pro­noun is a word that ‘stands in’ for the noun. And per­son­al pro­nouns stand in for per­son­al nouns, peo­ples names. So instead of:
Fred went to the shop, where Fred bought a pack of fags.
We can short cut with:
Fred went to the shop, where he bought a pack of fags.
The he is a per­son­al pro­noun, used to reduce need­ed to con­stant­ly say Fred. There are more of these lit­tle words than you might think at first, here is a list of them:

Declen­sion of Cur­rent 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
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

Take your time to have a bit of a look at this table, notice the lack of any over arch­ing rules that could sum up all of these dif­fer­ent word forms. Well be refer­ring back to this table in rest of this lit­tle series.
Also see:
Part One — First per­son pro­nouns
Part Two — Sec­ond per­son pro­nouns
Part Three — Third per­son pro­nouns
Part Four — Mis­cel­la­neous, Con­clu­sion and Ref­er­ences

I am remind­ed tonight of a com­ment Alex made a few days ago. He said he some­times wished he had a sec­ond web log, one that nobody read, one that he could safe­ly slag out his friends with­out fear that they may actu­al­ly read it. But I say to him, screw that, be as bitchy as you want on your blog. Don’t care what peo­ple might think.
The rea­son I am remind­ed of this is a long and wan­der­ing con­ver­sa­tion between Richard and I had this evening. Rich said many things, I said lit­tle. Most­ly because I know I’d be tak­en the wrong way, and also because most of what I had felt like say­ing boiled down to “I told you so”, and I not keep­ing score so it does­n’t real­ly mat­ter.
One sub­ject that we went into a bit, and Rich brought this up which sur­prised me, was my Ber­nice sto­ry. If I under­stood right­ly Rich’s basic state­ment was that the prob­lems I’m cur­rent­ly hav­ing with the sto­ry are noth­ing more than a fab­ri­cat­ed excuse not to actu­al­ly write it. He may be right. But then again he has­n’t read it so I could­n’t go into specifics. Regard­less, he had some very good ideas, as did Alex when I dis­cussed the sto­ry with him.
Ber­nice and the Doc­tor catch­ing up for a chat and some tea is after all a bor­ing sto­ry. Rich says I write as if I’m writ­ing a dic­tio­nary… I’m still not too clear on what he meant by that. He also said that I can get away with a bor­ing sto­ry if I tell it in an inter­est­ing way (and I’m assum­ing he does­n’t think my ‘dic­tio­nary’ style inter­est­ing at all).
Of course I’m aware that Rich will most like read this post at some point, but what peo­ple make of what is writ­ten here is there own prob­lem. For Rich more so than any­one else.

Mr David Gold­ing made some inter­est­ing com­ments about the Ber­nice sto­ry. He is right, the sto­ry is lack­ing. Doc­tor Who sto­ries require a con­flict, usu­al­ly a vil­lain or an evil of some sort. My sto­ry has none of this… is it pos­si­ble to write a Doc­tor Who sto­ry that does not fea­ture such con­flict???
There are some options that I’ve con­sid­ered to make the sto­ry more inter­est­ing, and more of a sto­ry… but I’m not sure how far I should take it. I like the idea of this sto­ry being an intro­duc­tion to the Doc­tor and his 14 com­pan­ions.

As always, while writ­ing the lit­tle (very lit­tle) bit below Mal­com we seem to have found once more the despair to write. It is a com­mon event, some­how we end up writ­ing one thing and sud­den­ly our head is full of ideas about nov­els and all those sto­ries that were to be but aren’t to be any more.
Per­haps this time we will set our sites small, on some­thing that is tru­ly achiev­able (no there is a strange look­ing word). We are remind­ed of an old say­ing that we can’t remem­ber… some­thing like “It’s bet­ter to reach for the stars and miss than to aim for a pile of ‘shit’ and hit it dead on!”. Strange­ly we could­n’t find the exact quote out there on the net, but we did find this which seems to cap­ture the theme:
“I’d rather be a could-be if I can­not be an are;
because a could-be is a maybe who is reach­ing for a star.
I’d rather be a has-been than a might-have-been, by far;
for a might have-been has nev­er been, but a has was once an are.”
‑Mil­ton Berle