My Grammar and I (Or Should That Be 'Me'?): Old-School Ways to Sharpen Your English

A
NON

---

There are various categories of pronoun, depending on the function they perform
in a sentence.
The  subject  pronouns  are  I  ,  you  ,  he  ,  she  ,  it  ,  we  ,  they  and  the  equivalent
object pronouns are me , you , him , her , it , us , them. If we’ve lost you here,
see
here
 for  an  explanation  of  subject  and  object.  But  it  boils  down  to  the
difference  between  I  love  him  and  He  loves  me  ,  which  could  be  quite
significant.
Smart Alec: Since pronoun is a noun, why isn’t proverb a verb?
A bit about SEX
Ahem.  The  English  language  does  not  have  a  singular  pronoun  that
encapsulates  both  genders.  It  used  to  be  that  ‘the  masculine  was  deemed  to
embrace  the  feminine’,  but  1960s  feminism  put  a  stop  to  that  sort  of  hanky-
panky  and  has  left  us  with  a  grammatical  problem  ever  since.  Some  people
meticulously write he or she , his or hers , wherever it crops up, but this quickly
becomes cumbersome and tedious. Others go for s/he , but that still leaves them
with the his/her dilemma. Still others go to the opposite extreme and use she or
her throughout (so the feminine is now embracing the masculine, as it were).
Lots  of  people  nowadays  fudge  this  by  using  their  as  a  non-gender-specific
singular, as in the judge (who may be a man or a woman, we don’t know and it
would  be  sexist  to  assume  either)  adjusted  their  wig  .  It  isn’t  pretty,  but
sometimes being purist is no oil painting either.