Is "her" a personal pronoun? I'm not allowed to use them in an essay. How can I change that but still indicate that her parents are buying it for her?
1 Answer
Mar 8, 2016
Typically, when writing essays, the only personal pronouns that are discouraged are in the first and second persons.
Explanation:
While in an essay you would be discouraged from saying
I believe her parents bought her a boat.
because of the use of the personal pronoun I, it would be totally fine to say
Her parents bought her a boat.
There is really no reason to have a blanket ban on third person personal pronouns. The only reason I can think of for not wanting to use personal pronouns is to stress the person to whom the personal pronoun is referring, since confusion may arise when saying:
She bought him it because they wanted her to.
But you would want to say
Stacy bought Leonard the boat because her parents wanted her to.
