How to Use Possessive Pronouns to Show Ownership

Pronouns help writers shorten their sentences and vary their word choices so writing doesn’t seem repetitive. A pronoun is a short, generic word that replaces a noun. It can have one of three jobs:

• Actor: replace a noun that performs the action in the sentence (called nominative case; he, she, I, we, they, ze, xe, ve, ey, te)
• Owner: replace a noun that owns or possesses another noun in the sentence (called possessive case; mine, his, hers, ours, theirs, zirs, xirs, vers, eirs, ters)
• Object: replace a noun that receives the action in the sentence (called objective case; me, you, him, her, us, them, zir, xem, ver, em, tem)

This article will help you understand how possessive pronouns work and when to use them.

What are Possessive Pronoun?

Use possessive pronouns to show that an item, object, or idea belongs to someone or something that you already mentioned in the sentence or story. Possessive pronouns show ownership; use them to replace a noun that owns something.

To show ownership on regular nouns, we add an apostrophe and an s to the end of the word (Cindy’s bicycle; the country’s flag; the students’ teacher). You use an apostrophe on the original noun, but you do not use an apostrophe to create a possessive pronoun (so her’s and their’s are wrong, for example).

Here, a possessive pronoun can replace the possessive noun Cindy’s. When you replace Cindy’s with a possessive pronoun, Cindy’s bicycle becomes her bicycle. Since Cindy is just one person, choose a singular possessive pronoun to replace Cindy.

• Singular: my, mine, your, yours, her, hers, his, its, zirs, xirs, vers, eirs, ters (only one owner)
• Plural: our, ours, your, yours, their, theirs (more than one owner)

If you’re writing a story about Cindy and her bicycle, then you can vary your word choice so your story doesn’t seem repetitive. This is the perfect opportunity to use a possessive pronoun to replace Cindy’s name in some parts of your story. Imagine how boring a story would be if a writer repeated the owner’s name in every sentence!

What is a Possessive Adjective?

If you’re taking a higher level English course, your instructor might want you to learn the difference between a possessive pronoun and a possessive adjective (sometimes called a possessive determiner). Most writers lump these two options together under the term possessive pronoun because they play similar roles. The key difference between a possessive pronoun and a possessive adjective is whether the word replaces the owner and the object or just the owner.

• Possessive Pronouns Replace the Owner and the Object: mine, yours, his, hers, ours, theirs, zirs, xirs, vers, eirs, ters (Ex: The pen is my pen. The pen is mine.)
• Possessive Adjectives Replace only the Owner and Must Connect to a Noun: my, your, his, her, its, our, their, zir, xir, vis, eir, ter (Ex: That’s Lisa’s That’s her pen.)

Possessive determiners are more commonly called possessive adjectives because of their placement and function. Both regular adjectives and possessive adjectives tell us more about nouns. In the example above, my tells us about the pen. A possessive adjective must come before the noun it’s describing.

You usually won’t need to think about this difference between possessive pronouns and possessive adjectives. People will understand if you refer to both as possessive pronouns.