Complete the sentence: My cousin rang her boss and told _____ that she thought it would make a great slogan.

Complete the sentence: My cousin rang her boss and told _____ that she thought it would make a great slogan.

• A. Her
• B. Them
• C. Us
• D. Him

Answer: (D)

The key idea is choosing the correct object pronoun after tell/told. After telling someone, you use the object pronoun to refer to the person who was told. Here that person is the boss. Saying told him is natural because the boss is the recipient of the information. If you said told her, that would imply the boss is female, which isn’t specified. Them would be plural or gender-neutral and wouldn’t fit a single boss, and us would include the speaker, not the boss. So the sentence reads: My cousin rang her boss and told him that she thought it would make a great slogan.

The key idea is choosing the correct object pronoun after tell/told. After telling someone, you use the object pronoun to refer to the person who was told. Here that person is the boss. Saying told him is natural because the boss is the recipient of the information. If you said told her, that would imply the boss is female, which isn’t specified. Them would be plural or gender-neutral and wouldn’t fit a single boss, and us would include the speaker, not the boss. So the sentence reads: My cousin rang her boss and told him that she thought it would make a great slogan.