Sunday, January 10, 2010

Pet Peeve

I'm not great when it comes to grammar--at least not anymore. Unfortunately, I have let Facebook, Twitter, and texting come between what I know to be correct and what I actually do. But I am seeing more and more of one of my biggest grammar pet peeves and I cannot stay quiet any longer.

WHEN will people--especially supposed professional writers--learn when to use 'I' and 'me' properly? Everywhere I'm looking these days, writers insist on using 'I' when 'me' would be the proper word. The last straw was today, while reading a hockey magazine, the writer wrote this: "However, I'm fine with making resolutions to improve organizations and people other than THN and I." Now, I realize that The Hockey News isn't a literary publication--and seeing all of the mistakes in it proves that point--but these ARE writers getting paid for their writing. So, I think I should expect some semblance of them using the proper grammar rules. In the preceding example, it should NOT be "...THN and I." but "THN and me."

There are many places (such as here and here) that will explain which word should be used in a sentence. Not really that difficult.

So, using the rule, here is how to determine the proper word to use in the preceding sentence. Do you say '...other than me.' or '...other than I.' Simple as that.

Another example: Would you say 'Come with Julia and I.' or 'Come with Julia and me.'? Separating the subjects will give you 'Come with Julia.' and 'Come with I.' and 'Come with me.' The proper usage is the word 'me' in that sentence, so the correct sentence is 'Come with Julia and me.'

Many people think that using the word 'I' is always proper English and that using 'me' is always incorrect. But, just because it doesn't sound 'formal' doesn't mean it is necessarily wrong.

9 comments:

  1. I feel your pain sistah. My peeve is apostrophes on plural words, which I am seeing in publications more and more these days. (or should me have said "day's"?)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Um. Yeah!

    Oh, and I am totally blaming facebook, twitter and text messaging for my grammar issues.

    ReplyDelete
  3. kristi: DON'T get me started!

    meleah: I give a lot of leeway to posts on Facebook, Twitter, texting, but when 'professional' writers can't get it right... And I DO understand typos or brain farts--I do enough of them myself.

    I know one of the reasons this bothers me so much is because of the way I was schooled--way back in the 'olden days.' We were taught to diagram sentences; what vowels, nouns, etc, are; spelling. All of that went by the wayside by the time my girls went to school. I'm all for innovation and modernization and making things fun for learning, but there are some things that DO have to be taught. And it is NOT going to be fun and exciting to learn. Spelling, parts of speech, multiplication tables--none of those are fun, but they need to be taught.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Kristy and I have the same pet peeve!

    And I used "I": correctly!

    ;)~

    I think it's just more proof of the dumbing-down of the country.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Yeah, Tom but you spelled my mane with "Y", so I guess you didn't use i correctly after all. BAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!

    ReplyDelete
  6. FIGHT...FIGHT...FIGHT...

    {Just standing on the outside cheering the fight on--like in grade school. :D}

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous9:35 AM

    don't get me started on this stuff! You're right that using "I" makes it more formal or more highbrow, but that doesn't mean it's the right usage.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Too many people just don't understand that.

    ReplyDelete

Disquis

Being In a Funk

I'm still having a bit of a funk going on in my life. To be expected, I guess. But, it REALLY is affecting me to see my best friend ...