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Using Pronouns LESSON SUMMARY Pronouns are so often misused in speech that many people don’t really know how to avoid pronoun errors in writing. This lesson shows you how to avoid the most common ones.
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pronoun is a word used in place of a noun. Misused pronouns call attention to themselves and detract from the message of a piece of writing. This lesson explains the basic principles of pronoun use and highlights the most common pronoun problems: agreement, case, noun-pronoun pairs, incomplete constructions, ambiguous pronoun references, and reflexive pronouns.
Pronouns and Antecedents
The noun represented by a pronoun is called its antecedent. The prefix ante– means to come before. Usually, the antecedent comes before the pronoun in a sentence. In the following examples, the pronouns are italicized and the antecedents (the words they represent) are underlined. The government workers received their paychecks. Jane thought she saw the missing boy and reported him to the police. The shift supervisor hates these accidents because he thinks they can be easily avoided.
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