Grammar II: Pronoun Case, Number and Person, Reported Speech, Active and Passive Voice

Who did what to whom?

Mistakes were made. Notice what is missing: who made them. Politicians and companies use this sentence for a reason. Grammar is not only about being correct; it decides what your reader knows and notices.

The curriculum's examples for grammar (3.4) include pronoun case, number and person, correct verb tenses in reported dialogue, active or passive voice to suit the purpose and audience, and nonstandard grammar used deliberately for effect. This lesson covers each one.

1. Pronoun case

• Subject case (I, he, she, we, they, who) for subjects: She and I wrote the report.
• Object case (me, him, her, us, them, whom) for objects of verbs and prepositions: between you and me; for Maya and me.
• The drop test: remove the other person. With Maya and removed, Coach gave the jerseys to me sounds right; ...to I does not.
• Comparisons: finish the sentence in your head. She is taller than I (am). I like her more than him (more than I like him) means something different from I like her more than he (does).
• Who vs whom: answer the question with he or him. Who wrote it? (He wrote it.) To whom did you send it? (to him). In informal speech who is common everywhere; in formal writing use whom for objects.
• Reflexive pronouns (myself, herself) only reflect a subject already in the sentence: I hurt myself. Not Send it to Jordan or myself; use me.

2. Pronoun number and person

• Indefinite pronouns each, everyone, everybody, someone, nobody, either, neither take singular verbs: Everyone has a locker.
• **Singular they.** For a person whose gender is unknown or irrelevant, many style guides, including MLA (9th edition), accept they: Every student should bring their own skates. Always use they for a person who uses they as their pronoun, with plural verb forms: Alex said they are coming. Rewriting in the plural is another option: All students should bring their own skates.
• Collective nouns (team, class, council, jury) are usually singular in Canadian usage when the group acts as one: The council has made its decision.
• Person: do not shift between one, you and I. In formal essays avoid the general you (When you read the novel, you feel...); write about readers or the reader instead.

3. Reported speech

Direct speech quotes exact words: Maya said, "I am tired." Reported (indirect) speech reports them in your own sentence, usually after a past-tense verb such as said, told, asked, explained. Then you backshift:

• present → past: am → was; have → had
• past or present perfect → past perfect: lost / have lost → had lost
• will → would; can → could; may → might
• pronouns and time words change too: I → she; today → that day; tomorrow → the next day; here → there

"I will finish the essay tomorrow," Jordan said. → Jordan said that he would finish the essay the next day.

Two exceptions: if the statement is still true, you may keep the present (The teacher said that the essay is due Friday, if it still is). And if the reporting verb is present (Jordan says), no backshift is needed.

In literary analysis, remember the literary present: The narrator says that he was afraid is fine when the narrator speaks in the past about the past; your own analysis stays in the present.

4. Active and passive voice

In the active voice, the subject does the action: The council cut the rink hours. In the passive voice, the subject receives it, using a form of be + past participle: The rink hours were cut (by the council).

Use active voice by default: it is clearer, shorter and shows responsibility.

Use passive voice when:

• the doer is unknown or unimportant: The rink was built in 1998.
• you want to focus on the receiver: Three students were honoured at the assembly.
• the conventions of a form expect it, as in many science lab reports: The solution was heated to 40 °C.

Watch the passive that hides responsibility. Mistakes were made and The decision has been taken to close the rink leave out who decided. In critical reading, this is a signal to ask who? In your own writing, name the doer when it matters.

Do not confuse passive with past tense. The council cut the hours is past tense but active. Passive needs be + past participle.

5. Nonstandard grammar on purpose

The curriculum recognizes that writers sometimes use nonstandard grammar deliberately for effect:

• Dialogue that sounds like real speech: "Me and him are going to the rink."
• Voice in a first-person narrator, poem or song lyric.
• Informal forms such as texts, ads and some social media posts.

Remember that dialects are not broken English: varieties of English spoken in different communities (in Newfoundland and Labrador, in the Ottawa Valley, in many First Nations communities and among many young people in cities) follow consistent rules of their own. Use them with respect, never as a joke at a community's expense. In formal writing (essays, reports, letters to officials), use Standard English, because that is what those readers expect. Moving between varieties to suit the audience is called code-switching, and skilled writers do it on purpose.