Those pesky but proper pronouns
I cringed the other evening when I heard a TV reporter state, “And then they presented the award to he and I.”
Whoa, I thought, back up that grammatical train.
He or him? Me or I?
Actually, this reporter would receive a big red line through both pronouns if she submitted this verbiage as part of an English assignment during one of the courses I taught at Marion Technical College. But, she is not alone. Many of us will confess that we have problems determining the proper case for some pronouns.
By case, we mean the job the pronoun performs within the sentence. If you think back to those sometimes mind-numbing English classes in middle school, you may recall that “I” and “he” (along with he, she, we, they and who) are subjective pronouns; they deliver the action of the verb. For example, He delivered the presentation.
Words such as him, her, us, them and whom are objective pronouns; they receive the action of the subject and verb. The details were presented to her.
In the heat of the moment, most of us do not have the time to consider subjective vs. objective pronouns and whether the pronoun we are considering receives the action of a transitive verb.
So, I suggest that simple, tried and true method for determining the correct pronoun: eliminate the other person and the “and” in the sentence to decide which pronoun sounds best. Instead of they presented the award to him and me, think of it as they presented the award to me.
Wait, though, there’s more. Writers often question whether they should use a subjective or objective pronoun following prepositions such as after, by, for, from and through.
If you say to use an objective pronoun, you are right. You will have to go through her to get to me.
Okay, then, which is correct? It is I? Or, it is me?
In general, you should use an objective case pronoun after a verb. But, in the above example, I hope you put your money on the first choice, “it is I” — even though “it is me” (or it’s me) may have a better ring to it when said aloud.
Of course, as Aaron Brown indicated in his blog, Business Grammar, Come On, People, we always have our trusty resources, Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style and our AP Stylebook to help us choose correctly.
And, while we are sometimes tempted to side line formality, in most instances, formal pronoun usage rules.
