Pronoun Agreement and Case on the ACT: Every Rule, Named and Explained

When you see a pronoun in an underlined portion, find its antecedent before evaluating any answer choice. Ignore all intervening phrases — prepositional phrases, modifying clauses, and parenthetical information — and identify the noun the pronoun is replacing. Then ask: is that noun singular or plural? The pronoun must match.

Watch for these ACT traps: collective nouns like “team,” “committee,” and “organization” are singular and require singular pronouns. Compound subjects joined by “and” are plural and require plural pronouns. Indefinite pronouns like “each,” “every,” “anyone,” and “everyone” are always singular.

When you see a pronoun in an underlined portion, identify the person established earlier in the sentence or passage. If the passage refers to people in third person (“a student,” “researchers,” “one”), all pronouns referring to those same people must stay in third person. A sudden shift to “you” or “your” is always wrong unless the sentence is directly addressing the reader in a consistent way throughout.

The most common ACT trap: a sentence that starts with a third-person noun (“a person,” “a student,” “an athlete”) and then uses “you” or “your” to refer back to it. Third-person nouns require third-person pronouns. “You” is second person and cannot be the antecedent for “a student.”

When you see a pronoun in an underlined portion, count the number of nouns in the surrounding sentences that match it in number and person. If there are two or more nouns the pronoun could logically refer to, the antecedent is ambiguous and the pronoun must be replaced with a specific noun.

The ACT is particularly likely to test this when two people or organizations interact in a passage. Sentences like “When the director met with the producer, she approved the script” are ambiguous — “she” could refer to either person. The correct fix replaces “she” with the specific name or noun: “the director approved the script” or “the producer approved the script.”

Find the pronoun in question and identify its grammatical role. Is it the subject of a verb — the one doing the action? Use a subject pronoun: I, he, she, they, we, who. Is it the object of a verb or a preposition — the one receiving the action or following “to,” “for,” “between,” “with,” or “by”? Use an object pronoun: me, him, her, them, us, whom.

For who vs. whom specifically: if the pronoun is performing the action of a verb, use “who.” If the pronoun is receiving the action or following a preposition, use “whom.” A quick check: if you can substitute “he” or “she” and the sentence still works, use “who.” If you can substitute “him” or “her,” use “whom.”

Cross out the other noun or pronoun in the compound and read the sentence with only your pronoun in place. The pronoun that sounds correct when it stands alone is the correct one in the compound. “The director gave the script to she and I” → cross out “she and” → “The director gave the script to I.” That is wrong. “The director gave the script to her and me” → cross out “her and” → “The director gave the script to me.” Correct.

This method works for any compound: “between you and I” is always wrong (“between I” fails), “between you and me” is always correct (“between me” is right). Run the Cross-Out Method every time you see a compound with a pronoun before choosing an answer.

Expand the word in question to its full two-word form and read the result in the sentence. If “it is,” “they are,” “who is,” or “you are” makes the sentence grammatically correct, the contraction (with apostrophe) is right. If the expanded version sounds wrong or makes no grammatical sense, the possessive form (without apostrophe) is what you need.

This test takes three seconds and eliminates all guessing. Run it every single time one of these four pairs appears in an underlined portion, without exception.

When you see “their” in an underlined portion, apply the Antecedent Finder first. If the antecedent is a clearly plural noun (“the students,” “researchers,” “the athletes”), “their” is correct. If the antecedent is a singular indefinite pronoun (“each,” “every,” “anyone,” “someone,” “everyone”) or a singular noun used generically (“a student,” “an employee”), the ACT almost always marks “their” as wrong and prefers “his or her.”

The one exception worth knowing: when the antecedent is a generic singular noun referring to a person (“an athlete,” “a researcher”) and “their” is the only pronoun among the answer choices that is both third-person and gender-neutral, the ACT may accept it. In practice, if “his or her” appears as an answer choice alongside “their,” “his or her” is almost always correct for a singular antecedent.