Using demonstrative reference words

THIS time, our back-to-the-basics review of English composition brings us to the demonstrative reference words — those handy words we use so we don't have to repeat ourselves to drive home a point and, even more important, to make what we are saying more immediate and forceful. As some of you may recall, the three categories of these reference words are the demonstrative adjectives, the demonstrative pronouns, and the demonstrative adverbs.

Demonstrative adjectives. This category consists of the modifiers "this," "that," "these," and "those." These words belong to the class of function words called determiners, which serve to either identify nouns or word groups functioning as nouns or give additional information about them (the non-demonstrative determiners "a," "an," and "the" also belong to this class). We will remember that the demonstrative adjectives always agree in number with the nouns they modify — "this" and "that" for singular nouns, as in "this apple" and "that woman," and "these" and "those" for plural nouns, as in "those apples" and "those women."

English Plain and Simple (2227th of a series)