Possessive Pronouns

My cake turned out great. Yours doesn’t taste right.

Possessive pronouns are used to refer to a specific person, people, thing, or things that belong to a person or group of people. Sometimes, a possessive pronoun can also refer to things that belong to other things or animals.
There are several different possessive pronouns. These words are chosen based on:

• Number: mine is singular, ours is plural
• Person: 1st person uses mine, 2nd person uses yours or 3rd person uses
  his or hers
• Gender: males use his, females use hers

Below is a useful chart of possessive pronouns, with examples on how they can be used in sentences. Understand how each possessive pronoun can:

• Be the object or subject.
• Refer to a singular or plural noun that it stands for. This is referred to as the antecedent.

number	person	gender (of “owner”)	possessive pronouns
singular	1st	male/female	mine
	2nd	male/female	yours
	3rd	male	his
		female	hers
plural	1st	male/female	ours
	2nd	male/female	yours
	3rd	male/female/neuter	theirs

Mine

• This is a fast computer. Mine is slow. (subject = My computer)
• Your dog seems friendly. How nice is mine?(object = my dog)

Yours

• My cake turned out great. Yours doesn’t taste right. (object = your cake)
• My TV stopped working. Yours is still on. (subject = Your TV)

His

• His cat won a medal. (subject = his cat)
• Bill drank his coffee, but Betty spilt hers. (object = her coffee)
• Bill filed his taxes, but Betty forgot hers. (object = her taxes)

Ours

• Your cookies were burnt. Ours turned out great. (subject = Our cookies)
• Sally cut her grass. Ours still needs to be done. (subject = Our grass)

Theirs

• This isn’t Betty and Bill’s photo album. Theirs has flowers on it. (subject = Their photo album)
• Bill and Betty think their cookies are better than yours. What do you think of theirs? (object = their cookies)

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