This section deals with more difficult pronouns not mentioned in other sections:
1. Reflexive Pronouns
Singular – Myself, Yourself, Himself, Herself, Itself,
Plural – Ourselves, Yourselves, Themselves
For example – He taught himself to play the guitar.
2. Generic Pronouns – you, we, one, they, them, their.
For example – You never know what might happen.
3. Indefinite Pronouns – Some/ Any/ No + one/ body/ thing/ where (e.g. Anywhere)
For example – I’ll ask someone if there’s anywhere nice to eat around here.
The chart below outlines further examples of each type of pronoun with their uses, meanings and form. It is followed by extra information on each type of pronoun including common errors with examples. Try the exercises after!
Reflexive Pronouns
1. Often used with prepositions
There are many common prepositions used with Reflexive Pronouns. For example:
- He went on holiday by himself.
- I bought it for myself.
- Why are you talking to yourself?
- I hope you are proud of yourself.
There are other examples which are less common, which may have a different meaning. For example:
- He was beside himself with grief. (extremely upset by something)
2. We don’t use it with prepositions of place.
It just sounds wrong, so we use the object pronoun instead. For example:
I put it beside myself. ⮽ I put it beside me. ✅I keep it near myself. ⮽ I keep it near me. ✅I put it behind myself. ⮽ I put it behind me. ✅
As with most everything, there are exceptions. For example:
- I wrapped the blanket around myself. ✅
3. There are some common verbs with a particular meaning.
Some verbs are particularly common with Reflexive verbs and have a particular meaning. For example:
- I really enjoyed myself in Paris. – I had a good time.
- There are some left, help yourself. – take some/ as much as you want.
- If you don’t behave yourself …. – behave well, be well-behaved.
- I need to apply myself more. – work harder/ be more disciplined.
- Okay, that’s fine, suit yourself. – do what you like (often negative reply)
- Count yourself lucky it wasn’t. – you are lucky, it could be (have been) worse
Generic Pronouns
Generic pronouns refer to talking about things in general, instead of saying ‘people’.
1. They/ Them/ Their referring to the singular.
Although it is considered quite informal, when it is unclear if a person we are referring to is a man or woman, or could be either, we often use they, them and their.
For example:
- When someone is visiting, I take their coat and they sign their name.
- I don’t know why anyone would pierce their tongue!
- Whoever did it, they left their fingerprints at the scene.
- Every time I meet a fan; I take a picture with them.
Indefinite Pronouns – Some, Every, No + one/ body, thing, where
There are many different types of indefinite pronoun (some, several, none, few etc), however, this page focuses on the use of somewhere, nobody, anything etc.
1. When to use any and some.
It may seem confusing as to when we should use these parts of the Indefinite Pronoun, and I have often been asked a question like:
“Do we say ‘Can anyone help?’ or ‘Can someone help?’ What’s the difference?”
Or
“Why is it, ‘Anyone could have stolen it.’, and not, ‘Someone could have stolen it’?”
And the answer is not easy, but sometimes it doesn’t matter. Both work fine in these sentences and you could make lots more examples where it doesn’t matter. However, it is important to recognise when is does matter. For example:
I need anyone to help me. ⮽ I need someone to help me. ✅I don’t someone in my room.⮽ I don’t want anyone in my room. ✅It’s important that anyone checks.⮽ It’s important that someone checks. ✅It must be anywhere. ⮽ It must be somewhere. ✅
What we can take from these sentences, are the most basic guidelines for when to use some and any. Including:
- Firstly, some means a particular person, only one, even when we don’t know who it is. We can speak about this as a particular someone, who, for example, did something, only one person did that thing.
- We use anyone when we refer to any person of a number of people which could do, or could have done something. For example,
- ‘Anyone could do that!’
- This shows that any person, no one in particular, could do that thing.
2. Do not use nobody/no-one, nothing or nowhere with another negative.
This refers to the ‘double negative’ rule in English. Of course there are exceptions to double negatives, but not with these pronouns. However, it has become increasingly common to hear mistakes like the following:
I didn’t do nothing wrong. ⮽ I didn’t do anything wrong. ✅I’m not giving nobody that code.⮽ I’m not giving anybody that code. ✅He won’t go nowhere with you. ⮽ He won’t go anywhere with you. ✅
We can see from these examples that:
we use any with other negatives to avoid a double negative.