The Proper Use of the Pronouns I, Me, and MyselfObject, Subject, and Personal PronounsMany people feel that using the word “I” is egocentric and use “me” or “myself” instead. In most instances these replacements are used incorrectly. Even some of the most experienced writers have been known to use these pronouns incorrectly, but that doesn’t make it right. The sentence, “The drinks were given to Jim, Spock and myself”, actually means the drinks were given to Jim, to Spock, and to me. The correct pronoun is therefore “me”, so the sentence should be written “The drinks were given to Jim, Spock and me”. If you’re talking about yourself, then “myself” is correct, as in, “I’ve given myself a haircut.” Object pronoun – replaces a noun as the object of the sentence.If writing about two or more people, including yourself, mention yourself as the last in the group, e.g. …for her and me. It is a common mistake to write this as “for her and I”. You can check this by adding the preposition “for” in front of both “her” and “I”, making it read “for her and for I”. It is obvious now that using “I” is wrong in this case. The correct usage is to say, “for her and for me”, or, therefore, to shorten it to “for her and me”.So to determine which pronoun to use, split the phrase and say all the missing words in the compound phrase. Subject pronoun - replaces a noun as the subject of the sentence.In the case of subject pronouns, “I”, for instance, precedes the verb and it is NEVER correct to say “me”, as in “Me and my friends go to school together every day”. If you split the subject, since it is compound, and say the subjects individually, such that “My friends go to school together every day” (which is correct) and “Me go to school together…” (which is obviously incorrect), then you’ll know immediately which pronoun to use. The correct version would then be, “My friends and I go to school together everyday.” Note that “I and my friends” is also incorrect. When speaking of yourself as part of a compound subject, you come at the end of the list.To determine if you are using the correct pronoun, split the compound subject or object and say the new sentence to yourself. It will be obvious which is right or wrong. In the case in which you compare someone or something to yourself, for example, when stating that your sister is older than you, it is WRONG to state, “My sister is older than me.” To determine the correct pronoun, fill in the missing word, which in this case is the verb after the pronoun. In this case, the missing verb is “am”. The correct usage, therefore, is “My sister is older than I am” or “My sister is older than I”. Contact me if you have any questions or have ideas for other articles you'd like to see. Back to the Articles list page. |
