| PERSON | SINGULAR | PLURAL |
| 1st | myself | ourselves |
| 2nd | yourself | yourselves |
| 3rd | herself / himself* / itself | themselves* |
TIP: *his → himself *their → into themselves
Use reflexive pronouns when the subject reflects the action back on itself. For example:
- Love yourself! (This is an imperative sentence, so the subject is ‘you’.)
- They are always laughing at themselves. (A group of people are laughing at their own actions.)
- I made the cake myself. (‘I’ did the action.)
Make sure that the pronoun and what it refers to are in the same phrase.
TIP: In the sentence “Paul lost his book”, his refers to Paul, not to the book. In many languages, including Spanish and French, possessive pronouns match the gender of “book”. This is not the case in English.
