10.31 Taking the focus off the subject: using impersonal 'it'

You often only want to mention one thing or fact in a clause. For example, you often want to focus on the type of information that is normally expressed by an adjective. But an adjective cannot stand alone as the subject of a clause. A common way of presenting information of this kind is to make the adjective the complement of 'be', with 'it' as the subject.

If you do not want to choose any of the clause elements as the thing you are going to talk about, you can use several structures with 'it' as subject.

'It' can be used:

* to describe a place or situation

• It's lonely here.

* to talk about the weather or to say what the time is.

• It had been raining all day.
• It is seven o'clock.

These uses are often called the impersonal uses of 'it'.

10.32

In these uses, 'it' does not refer back to anything earlier in the speech or writing, and so it is different from the personal pronoun, which usually refers back to a particular noun group:

• The sun kept changing everything as it moved across the sky.
• Paris is special, isn't it?

For more information about personal pronouns, see the section beginning at paragraph 1.96.

Note that the pronoun 'it' can also be used to refer to a whole situation or fact which has been described or implied.

• He's never come to see his son. It's most peculiar, isn't it?
• It doesn't matter.
• It's my fault.

10.33

'It' can also be used to introduce a comment on an action, activity, or experience. The subject 'it' refers forward to a 'to'-infinitive clause or a finite subordinate clause.

• It costs so much to get there.
• It was amazing that audiences came to the theatre at all.

This structure with 'it' allows you to avoid having a long subject, and to put what you are talking about in a more prominent position at the end of the sentence.