Pronouns

More than once, someone has asked me what my biggest hot button is in grammar.  What makes me cringe the most when I hear it or see it?

I think the answer is the misuse of pronouns.  Even when I listen to television announcers – anchors, sports announcers, weather experts – I hear grammar goofs that almost always include pronouns.  For most of us, the issue is that “everyone says it that way.”  Well, yes, they do.  But “it” doesn’t sound good no matter who says it!

One of the issues surrounding pronouns is that each does a specific job, depending on whether it’s in the nominative form (the subject of a sentence or verb), objective form (object of a sentence, verb, or preposition), possessive or reflexive (those ending in self or selves).  They can’t be changed just because we want them to be!

Nominative pronouns include I, you, he, she, it, we, they, who.
Objective pronouns include me, you, him, her, it, us, them, whom. 

Let me give you some “for instances.”  (In my seminars, I call these “Your Turn.”)

What are your choices in the sentences below? 

1.   I appreciate (you / your) taking the time to meet with Betty and (I / me). 

2.   (She / Her) and her grandmother ate dinner. 

3.   Lynda asked Juan and (me / myself) to go with (she / her) and Amy.

4.   Michael and Martin are younger than (us / we).

5.   That’s between (he and I / him and me).

OK, ready for the answers?

1.   Your / me.  Why your?  Because it comes in front of a gerund, a verb ending in “ing.”  The preferred version places the possessive form in front of the gerund to throw the emphasis on the doing, rather than on the doer.  Does anyone actually notice?  Probably not.  But it’s the correct usage.

The second choice is tough for many of us, probably because there are too many people in the sentence, which can confuse us.  Most of the time, with pronouns, the trick is to remove anyone who isn’t needed and focus only on the pronoun.  Here, we should remove Betty and just focus on “. . . to meet with me / I.”  Without Betty, it’s easy to choose “me.”  Having made that choice, we have to stay with it after adding Betty back into the sentence.

2.   She.  Why?  Again, remove anyone who isn’t necessary in the sentence – the grandmother.  Then the sentence is easy:  “She ate dinner.”  So the final sentence has to be, “She and her grandmother ate dinner.”

3.   me / her – While it’s become trendy to use “myself” in every other sentence, it’s rarely the right form.  If you understand the ideas in #1 and #2, you can now see that it has to be “me.”  I doubt anyone would say, “Lynda asked myself to go.”  I think many people are scared to use either I or me, and myself does sound elegant!  Wrong, but elegant.  And by now, using “her” in the second half of the sentence should be easy to understand.

4.   Well, are Martin and Michael younger than we?  Us?  If you can recognize that the sentence isn’t quite finished, it starts to make sense.  The sentence really has a verb as its last word:  the verb “are.”  The real sentence is, “Martin and Martin are younger than we are.”  Even though we don’t say or write that verb, it governs the choice of the pronoun.

5.   him and me – The answer lies in knowing that “between” is a preposition, and 99% of the time (nope, not 100%), the pronoun following a preposition will be in the objective case (me, her, him, us, them).

So, how did you do?  100%?  90%?  More important, does it make sense?  While getting these forms may take some work, especially when speaking, it’s worth the effort.  Many of us get confused merely because there are too many people or pronouns in the sentence.  By focusing on each one separately, we’ll make the right choice.