How to Spot Relative Pronouns

Lots of grammar students have found that relative pronouns can be tricky, and students will keep seeing these parts of speech throughout their school careers, including on the SAT standardized testing that colleges use to rank high school students as prospective undergrads. A few tips will help you identify these short words and deal with their meanings.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

1. Look for the "antecedent". What is this? It's a noun that appears earlier in a sentence. A relative pronoun sometimes links back to it. When you want to understand or spot a relative pronoun, you need to link it to its antecedent to understand what the sentence is saying. EXAMPLE: "George is the one who is biking".

2. Tag words you know as relative pronouns. The main relative pronouns are: who, that and which. Some other ones include whoever, whomever and whichever.

3. Check if the antecedent noun is a "person" or a "thing". When you want to link your relative pronouns, break them down into "people" or "things." If your pronoun is "that," your noun will be inanimate, and if your pronoun is "who," the noun will be gendered, a person or a personified animal. EXAMPLE: "The boots on the porch were the ones that we left there." (boots are inanimate) or "Kitty is the one who we saw walking in the back yard." (here 'Kitty' can be a person, or a pet cat, where the cat owner talks about her as if she is a person).

4. Check all clauses. A relative pronoun can occur at different places in a sentence, but if you look hard, you should always be able to link it back to its antecedent noun. EXAMPLE: "Fred worked all day at the office, but when I went outside to check the mail, after we ate breakfast, he was the one who I saw running through the sprinkler." (here we have to look closely to tie the pronoun "who" back to Fred).

5. Don't be confused by relative pronouns without a clear antecedent. EXAMPLE: "We saw Sue's car parked on Broad, and Jack's car parked on Main, but on King Street, we saw a car that wasn't either of theirs." (here the relative pronoun "that" refers to the word right before it, but it's not a car from either of the other clauses, it's a different one, and we don't know who the owner is).

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[grimsleygl]

on 9/3/2009 CONFESSIONS OF A WRITER! This is great information for someone like me. I am a writer who is generally able to use correct grammar. I'm not sure how or why I am able to do this because I honestly do not know many of the grammar rules at all! Surely I must have learned all these things in grade school, but if my life depended on it, I could not have told you what an "antecedent" was before reading your article. I would do well to sit at your feet and learn (or relearn) many such things from you. Thank you so much. 5*'s