In Nouns^x, Conversations^x, Pronouns^x

I have always heard in conversation - that must be him / her on the phone. Of course we say:He is on the phone now. Grammatically, "that must be him" it is not strictly correct, since the case of a pronoun after "be" is nominative. However, in this case (must be ***), we...

In older literature, the pronoun "one" or the indefinite article was used before a person's name when the character was first introduced to the reader. The setting usually was a conversation between two people talking about the third character. It's an old British literary...

The explanation given above is a good one. Did you read it? To simply express your opinion in everyday conversation, I suggest you do not use "According to me." It's fine for other pronouns and other nouns. According to Mike, according to her, according to the written...

Hi, If a teacher hits a student, may get sued. In casual conversation, which pronoun is used? Hard to say. eg Primary school teachers are usually women. 'They' is often used. Clive

English really needs another pronoun for cases like this! Traditionally, if the gender was unknown, the masculine pronoun would be used. In a grammar book from 50 years ago, your examples would most certainly use "his." Today this would still be considered grammatically correct, but...

Your instinct is right--the phrase refers to "last year's figure " but the word "figure" is understood and so dropped. So grammatically the spelling should be year's. However, it has become common especially in conversation to drop the 's, and that has slipped...

It's very common in sentences of this sort to drop everything after the pronoun. So "John is taller than I" is the acceptable wording. In fact, in conversation many, probably most, people would say, "John is taller than me." To those folks using the "correct"...

The dialog starts with a greeting formula. Hi, Mark! starts a conversation with a known acquaintance, a friend. How often do you approach a friend and say 'hello' and then ask your friend how long he has lived there? Does that sound like the first question you would ask a friend...

I have underlined some problem areas: The Woman Within the Doll The Baltimore Sun wrote that back in 1879, “A Doll's House” by Henrik Ibsen “shocked and offended people wherever feet” (1031). This might have caused him to become the “half-drowned” kind of man, as he...

Clive -- I agree that "everyone" is often treated as plural in casual conversation, and I might well say "everyone does their best" myself. But technically, shouldn't it be "everyone does his job and everyone does his best ," at least in formal writing? I...