{"id":6436,"date":"2014-02-20T09:05:55","date_gmt":"2014-02-19T22:05:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/?p=6436"},"modified":"2014-03-05T09:25:54","modified_gmt":"2014-03-04T22:25:54","slug":"consistent-pronouns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2014\/02\/consistent-pronouns\/","title":{"rendered":"Consistent pronouns"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mixing pronouns is a little like mixing drinks &#8211; both can lead to a fuzzy head!<\/p>\n<h2>Pronouns<\/h2>\n<div id=\"attachment_6444\" style=\"width: 250px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/pronouns.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6444\" class=\" wp-image-6444 \" alt=\"Common pronouns such as we, us, they, he, she and our\" src=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/pronouns-300x211.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"169\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/pronouns-300x211.jpg 300w, https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/pronouns-150x105.jpg 150w, https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/pronouns.jpg 362w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 240px) 100vw, 240px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-6444\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Some common pronouns that make writing (and reading) English much easier.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Just as\u00a0a reminder, a <strong>pronoun is a word that is used in place of a noun<\/strong>. So &#8216;he&#8217; replace&#8217; John&#8217; and &#8216;her&#8217; replaces &#8216;Suzie&#8217;s&#8217;, and so on.<\/p>\n<p>Pronouns are useful for<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>making writing <a title=\"Short and sweet\" href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2010\/07\/short-and-sweet\/\">shorter and clearer<\/a>\u00a0(it takes less to write &#8216;they&#8217; than &#8216;John, Mary, Chuan and Connor&#8217; for example)<\/li>\n<li>avoiding repetition of the noun (compare &#8216;Joe rode Joe&#8217;s bike until Joe felt too tired&#8217; and &#8216;Joe rode his bike until he felt too tired&#8217;)<\/li>\n<li>provide emphasis towards one noun (such as &#8216;The teacher herself missed the error in that question&#8217;). Mind you, this is a somewhat old fashioned way to write and I don&#8217;t recommend its use in business writing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There are different pronouns depending on gender and whether the noun is plural or singular.<\/p>\n<h2>Use pronouns consistently<\/h2>\n<p>When using pronouns, make sure you maintain the same or matching\u00a0pronoun throughout a sentence and paragraph.<\/p>\n<p>I recently read<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">For more details about {our product}, contact us on 1234 5678 or visit their website.<\/p>\n<p>The writer swaps from being part of the company (by using &#8216;us&#8217;) to being external to the company (by using &#8216;their&#8217;). Which is jarring and somewhat confusing.<\/p>\n<p>If in doubt about which pronoun to use, swap in the correct noun and make sure the sentence makes sense.<\/p>\n<p>Or make a conscious choice about the type of pronoun (such as if your business uses me or we, us or it), put it into your <a title=\"Style Guides\" href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2008\/02\/style-guides\/\">style guide<\/a> and stick to it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Do you have any trouble with pronouns? Have you ever checked the pronoun use on your website is consistent?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mixing pronouns is a little like mixing drinks &#8211; both can lead to a fuzzy head! Pronouns Just as\u00a0a reminder, a pronoun is a word that is used in place of a noun. So &#8216;he&#8217; replace&#8217; John&#8217; and &#8216;her&#8217; replaces &#8216;Suzie&#8217;s&#8217;, and so on. Pronouns are useful for making writing shorter and clearer\u00a0(it takes less [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,70],"tags":[992,327,176],"class_list":["post-6436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bad-writing-examples","category-grammar-details-2","tag-consistent","tag-noun","tag-pronoun"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6436"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6445,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6436\/revisions\/6445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}