Person, Person is a grammatical category that indicates whether a noun or pronoun
de nes the stance of Ii you,i or the other That is, first-person words refer to the self as a subject, object, or in other grammatical roles I speak clearly It is given tome She handed the book tome We like it It pleases him The pronouns I, me and me, us in these examples are all rst person, singular and
plural. Second person is always indicated by you in all numbers and cases. All the other pronouns are the person of the other, third person: It, it he, him she, her”
and they, them.”
Verbs and other pronouns must agree in number and person with the pronouns they modify, refer to, or portray action for. First-person plural subjects take rst- person plural verbs, which may have di erent forms than, say, rst-person singular or third-person plural verbs. See agreement, conjugation, irregular verbs, and number.
Consistency of person from clause to clause in a sentence helps a reader follow your thinking, while changes of person can confuse. WRONG We play in the elds,
and I enjoy it The sentence is potentially confusing because the reader does not know how the others feel about play or the eld, or why they were brought into the sentence in the rst place if the point is Is feelings. Better to write I played in the eld with them, and I enjoyed it This sentence is still somewhat misleading in that the reader doesn’t know how they felt about things, but it seems clearer that the statement is focused on I and not they Therefore the absence of information on “they’s” feelings is not so striking.
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