By Clover Carroll
Who doesn’t know and love Elmo, the red, furry muppet from Sesame Street who always refers to himself in the third person? He’s so famous, he’s even appeared on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon! When he doesn’t use his name—as in, “Elmo happy!”—he substitutes the pronoun “me” for “I” in many statements. “Me write the music, me write the words, that’s Elmo’s song,” he announces in his endearing falsetto, or “Me like to cook!” As part of his toddler persona, it appears that the word “I” has not yet found its way into his vocabulary. Elmo’s errors are so blatant that no one would think of emulating his way of speaking (or so we hope!). But when, as is too often the case, this kind of confusion invades adult speech, grammar lovers cringe. Most native English speakers’ immediately recognize that the way Elmo speaks is wrong—but do we know why?
The confusion about whether to choose me or I in a given sentence is one of the most common grammatical errors we encounter—and one of the most easily avoided! When a friend announces, “Please come with my husband and I to the beach,” should we risk hurting her feelings (or being uninvited) by pointing out that the correct phrasing should be “please join my husband and me”? I have even been requested to “take my daughter and I’s picture”! Or when we hear “Me and my friends are going fishing,” can we prevent a condescending “don’t you mean I and my friends” from slipping out? We see this kind of careless speech all over Facebook and email. “Me and my homies love cookies” is fine for Elmo, but not for an educated adult!
Me, myself, and I all refer to the same person, but they are not interchangeable! The basic way to remember which pronoun is correct is to figure out what role the word plays in the sentence or phrase. If the word is the subject—that is, the one performing the action—the correct choice is I. In “I love the ocean,” I is the subject, the one doing the loving. However, if you are the object of the action—that is, the one who has the action done to them—then me is the word to choose. In “the ocean soothes me,” me is the object of the verb, the one who is soothed. This includes when the person (in this case I) becomes the object of a preposition—such as to, with, on, or about—as in “come swimming with me” or “between you and me.” In other words, I is a subject pronoun, and me is an object pronoun—always, without fail. It’s as simple as that!
An easy way to remember this might be to think of the first line of the song “I See the Moon,” with lyrics by Jim Brickman and James Merrill:
I see the moon, the moon sees me
The moon sees somebody I want to see
So, God bless the moon and God bless me
And God bless the ‘Somebody’ I want to see
I is the subject who is doing the seeing in the first phrase; but in the second phrase, I becomes the object that is being seen by the moon, so me is the appropriate pronoun. And if we wanted to ruin the song, we could continue, “The moon and me see each other”! Do you see why that is wrong?
The choice of word based on its role in the sentence (or its case, to use the fancy grammatical term) is similar to the choice between who and whom (which I wrote about in a previous issue). Who is used when it is the subject of the phrase or sentence (who is coming to dinner?), while whom is used as the object (whom did you invite?). This also applies to prepositional phrases, as in Lily Tomlin’s memorable “Is this the party to whom I am speaking?” routine. Not only will you feel more confident if you get this subject/object stuff sorted out, but your communications will become more graceful and elegant.
When, as in my examples thus far, only one person is involved in the expression, the choice between I and me is usually clear. The errors more often occur when we talk about pairs or groups of people, for example “I hope you will invite my sister and I to your pool party” (I’d rather not invite either one if you can’t speak correctly!) or “My brother and me would love to come.” So when you are unsure which to use, the easiest test is simply to remove the other person from the sentence and consider how you would say it if only you were involved. You would never say, “I hope you will invite I to the party” now, would you? Since both people are objects of the invitation, ‘my sister and me’ would be correct. Similarly, if I said “Jane and me enjoyed the Million Puppet March in D.C.,” I could test my choice by removing Jane from the equation. “Me enjoyed the Million Puppet March” is a locution that would be uttered only by our friend Elmo (who was actually there!). So clearly, “Jane and I enjoyed the Million Puppet March” is the correct way to express this thought.
But what about myself? Answer: fuggedabout it! You should NEVER, ever substitute “myself” for either me or I—as in “Myself and my crew visited the site last week…” or “Please contact Bill or myself with questions.” Myself is a reflexive pronoun that should be used only (and it’s rarely) when you are the object of your own action, as in “I don’t ever see myself bungee jumping” or “I gave myself a birthday present.” It can also be used for emphasis, as in “I wrote the book myself.” However, if you insert a preposition, “me” should be used as the object of that preposition, so “the book was written entirely by me” is correct. Using myself in place of I or me only makes the speaker sound both uneducated and pretentious, so if in doubt, just avoid it altogether. Or use the grammar checker at www.grammarly.com.
For more insight into all of this, check out the Grammar Girl blog at www.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-girl.
