Personal Pronouns Instruction & Practice

Personal Pronouns: I, me, mine, we, us, our, ours, you, your, yours

Pronouns that are fine: they, them, theirs, him, his, her, hers, it, its, one

Why?

• It makes an assumption
• If you address the reader as you or we, you are making an assumption of what s/he thinks or is willing to think about (even if you use the “Understood You”)
• For example: If your essay begins with “Imagine being on a stranded island…” Well then you’ve just spoken directly to the reader as a command with the “understood you” as the unspoken subject of the sentence. Avoid speaking to the reader and therefore making assumptions.
• Instead say: “Being stranded on an island is hard to imagine, but most would think of….”

• It weakens your point.
• If you say, “I believe that Takara is better than Kaido,” then you are suggesting that it may be a relative truth. Perhaps some may disagree with you and you are leaving room for that opinion. However, essay writing is a practice of persuasion. Instead state what you believe as solid truth for all: “Takara is clearly the best sushi in Santa Cruz because…”

• Is is less specific, lacking power of expression
• Writers often refer to society or another group as us or we. Though we may be part of those groups, it is better writing to actually name the group rather than allowing a vague pronoun to take its place.
• For example: “Greek myths are valuable to us because they….”
• Better: “Greek myths are valuable to Western society because they….”

Practice on the sentences below by typing a correct version into the chat. Challenge course: avoid using the word, "one."

1. If you take a closer look at mythology, you’ll notice that most of the gods flaunted their powers.
2. (you) Imagine that you are living in a world dominated by god worship...
3. We continue to keep Greek mythology in our culture in order to study humanity and learn about our faults.
4. I think we desire Greek mythology because we can relate to the flawed characters.
5. When you first hear about the Amazon women, you may think they are crazy.
6. We see Hera, Athena and Aphrodite fight over the apple.
7. The characters hold such mighty powers that we wish we could have.
8. From studying the Greek myths we can learn that there are many lesson embedded in Greek mythology that we should heed.
9. The myths teach us lessons that we can apply over and over again.
10. The question I will be answering in this essay is, "Do you believe women were portrayed fairly in Greek Mythology?".