Saturday, December 16, 2006

I Object: Me & Her & Him & Us

On one of my papers, my teacher circled "you and I" in red. I guess that means it's wrong. I don't get it. She told me to look it up.

It's okay. Everyone in television land gets that one wrong, and so do many teachers. That's because the only rule they remember from the bad old days in grammar class is the one that says, when referring to another person and yourself, you should use "I." But that's not the case.

A simple trick to check for correctness is to eliminate the other person.

INCORRECT: The teacher gave you and I a lot of trouble.

It's incorrect, because if you eliminate "you," what's left is "The teacher gave … I a lot of trouble." (Ouch.)

NB: The word "between" always takes the objective pronoun, that is, me, him, her, them.

Between you and me, some grammar rules are too cool to be broken.

No comments: