English Grammar Drills

72 Noun Phrases
Exercise 5.2
Select the proper form of the two italicized possessive pronouns by underlining the correct form.
Mary needs to see her/hers accountant about a tax matter.
1. I couldn’t make out what they were saying about their/theirs.
2. We were naturally very sad to hear about your/yours loss.
3. Nobody had anything to say about his or her/hers decision.
4. My team’s performance was even worse than your/yours.
5. My candidate has not been able to gather much support. How about your/yours?
6. In light of all the difficulties, you really have to admire their/theirs attitude.
7. I got mine. Did you get your/yours?
8. The poor quality of produce in the marketplace really made me want to get her/hers.
9. When the lights went out, nobody could find their/theirs way back.
10. Miss Jones was concerned about where she had left her/hers in the classroom.
We need to be careful when we use the masculine and feminine singular pronouns he and
she. There is no problem using he to refer to males and she to females. The problem arises when
we use them in a sexist or stereotyped way. One problem is using he to refer to people in general.
Here is an example:
Whenever a person makes an investment, he should minimize sales commissions.
Many people would find this sentence to be objectionable because it sends a message that males
are the only kind of people who make investments.
There are two ways of rewriting this type of sentence to eliminate the generic he. One way is
to replace he with the compound he or she:
Whenever a person makes an investment, he or she should minimize sales commissions.
The other way is to replace he with the plural pronoun they. This solution will require the subject
of the sentence to be rewritten as a plural (people rather than a person) so that they will have an
appropriate plural antecedent:
When people first use computers, they tend to be completely overwhelmed.