What is the pronoun to be?

Answer 1

"To be" is not a pronoun. It's a verb.

A "pronoun" is as the etymology implies "for-/in place of" (pro) "name" (noun). You use it as a way to talk without repeatedly using the name as something or someone. Imagine how boring it would be if we were to say: "Jill take John to Lowes where John can buy a hammer. John will pay for the hammer with a Lowes card."

Pronouns come in various forms. The common ones are: he, she, it, you, we, they. Some less commonly recognized ones are: one, that, this, there, which, what, who, whom, etc. You can make your writing more fluid and fun to read by "mixing it up": use the name, use a pronoun, etc., but make sure that the reader knows which "he" is referring to which noun.

The best rule of thumb, is to link subject pronouns and nouns together and link object pronouns/nouns together. For example:

John dug a hole with a pick. He (john) then filled it (hole) with a shovel.

It's clear that "John" and "he" are the same thing. If I left off the "with a shovel," it still is clear even if I ignored the associated verb, "filled." Consider:

John dug a hole with a pick. He then painted it.

Did he paint the pick or the hole? Syntactically (how words fit together), "it" is the "hole," because just as "hole" is the object of "dug," "it" is the object of "painted." Note that "pick" is an object of the preposition "with." Now if you say:

John dug a hole with a pick. He lost it.

There's no way to determine if he lost the pick or the hole... or his mind. This is because of another rule that conflicts with the first rule: match the object pronoun to the closest object noun. In this case, "it" is a misplaced modifier. A good writer will watch out for these cases so that he/she does not lose their reader.