Person is determined by whether writers are referring to themselves, to their readers, or to objects, ideas or persons other than themselves and their readers. Person is important for choosing pronouns and subject-verb agreement endings. Pronouns may have any of these three persons in English:
Choose appropriate pronouns to express the nouns involved in your sentences.
Subject-verb agreement also depends on the person of the subject. In the present tense, if the subject is a third-person singular noun, then the verb usually takes the agreement ending -s.
The president reads my report over and over without any
show of satisfaction.If you are using the verb be in the past tense and the subject is a first- or third-person singular noun (I, he, she, it), use was.
Nevertheless, my department head was impressed by the
report.If the subject is a second-person singular noun (you) or a first-, second- or third-person plural noun (we, you, they), use were.
We (you, they) were scheduled to read the report after
the president finished it.
