Pronouns and Possessives: I, Me, My, Mine

These words are short, extremely frequent, and easy to get slightly wrong forever. The table is worth memorising properly once.

The five sets

Subject	Object	Possessive adjective	Possessive pronoun	Reflexive
I	me	my	mine	myself
you	you	your	yours	yourself
he	him	his	his	himself
she	her	her	hers	herself
it	it	its	—	itself
we	us	our	ours	ourselves
they	them	their	theirs	themselves

Subject or object?

The subject does the action; the object receives it.

• She called me. (she does, I receive)
• We invited them.

❌ Me and John went to the shop. ✅ John and I went to the shop. (we are doing the going)

Quick test — remove the other person. Me went is obviously wrong, so it must be I went. The same test works at the end: He invited John and I → He invited I? No — so it's John and me.

My or mine?

My comes before a noun. Mine replaces the whole phrase.

• That is my bag.
• That bag is mine. (not my)

❌ That is mine bag. ✅ That is my bag.

Possessive pronouns are also how you answer whose:

• Whose coat is this? — It's hers. / Mine.

Reflexives: when the two are the same person

Use the -self form when the subject and the object are the same.

• I hurt myself. (not "I hurt me")
• She taught herself to code.
• Help yourself to coffee.

They also add emphasis: I made it myself. And note by myself means alone: I went by myself.

The apostrophe

For people, add 's:

• Anna's car · my brother's house
• Plural already ending in -s: just an apostrophe — the students' results
• Irregular plural: the children's books

For objects, English usually prefers of or a plain noun pair:

• ✅ the leg of the table / the table leg
• 🚫 the table's leg (understood, but sounds odd)

The possessive follows the owner, not the thing

In English, his or her is chosen by who owns it — never by the noun that follows.

• Anna lost her passport. (Anna is female → her, even though passport is a thing)
• Tom called his sister. (Tom is male → his, even though sister is female)

Its and it's

This is the single most common written error in English, native speakers included.

• its = belonging to it — The dog wagged its tail.
• it's = it is / it has — It's raining.

Its has no apostrophe. If you can say "it is", use it's; otherwise its.

The same trap has a plural version:

Word	Means	Example
their	belonging to them	their house
there	in that place	over there
they're	they are	they're late

Sorting out whose is whose

A: Is this your umbrella?

B: No, mine's the black one. I think it's hers — she left hers by the door.

A: Then whose is this one?

B: Ours, probably. The kids never label anything of theirs.

Every possessive there stands alone, with no noun after it — so every one is the mine / hers / ours / theirs column.

Test yourself

The quiz below covers all five columns and the apostrophe.