Trick to Remember I vs. Me

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Linda calling from Dallas.

Well, hiya, Linda, what’s going on?

Yes, this is Grant.

Hi, Linda, it’s Martha.

Hi, Martha. Hi, Grant, how are you doing?

Super-duper.

Doing great. We appreciate your calling.

Glad to have you. What’s on your mind, Linda?

Well, you know, I always get confused on when to use I or me in a statement or in correspondence.

And I was wondering if you might have a trick that I could use or ask myself before I send something out, correspondence or talk to somebody and I send it out incorrectly.

I like to say my husband and I or should I be saying me and my husband?

And I always get that seemed backwards.

Linda, I’m so glad you asked for a trick about this little problem because there is one.

I can give you a secret that’ll help you.

I could bore you with grammatical jargon, but I’m not going to do that.

A trick would be great.

Okay.

How about this?

Linda, I want you to think of yourself as a prize fighter.

Okay.

Can you do that?

Well, I think so.

Okay.

The gloves, the silk shorts, cute little top.

Okay.

You got it?

Got it?

Love it.

Love it.

Okay.

Linda, I want you to think of yourself as a prize fighter, and I want you to score a knockout.

What I want you to do is every time you come across this problem, just knock out the other person.

In this case, your husband, if you’re talking about my husband and I or my husband and me.

Okay, let me give you an example.

I’ll give you two versions of the same sentence.

And I want you to knock out your husband each time, okay?

Should the sentence be, give the book to my husband and I?

Or should the sentence be, give the book to my husband and me?

Now let’s knock out your husband.

I thought it would be a me.

Right.

Well, right, because give the book to I sounds wrong, right?

Of course, yeah.

Exactly.

That’s perfect.

You want to try another one?

Okay, one more would be good.

How about from these two sentences, my husband and I want you to come to dinner,

Or my husband and me want you to come to dinner.

Now just knock your husband out of there.

Is it I want you to come to dinner, or is it me want you to come to dinner?

It would be I.

Exactly.

That’s all you have to know.

If you’re Elmo, I won’t assist me to your character.

No, actually, Elmo doesn’t say me.

He always says Elmo.

So that’s clever, Martha.

The knockout.

Just take the other person out of the equation, leave yourself in the sentence,

And you’ll automatically know intuitively whether or not it’s going to work, right?

Yeah.

How’s that, Linda?

That’s great.

That’s a wonderful little trick.

Thank you so much.

Well, you are more than welcome.

All right.

You guys have a good day.

Okay.

Thank you for calling, Linda.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba.

It works.

Martha, that’s great.

It does work.

That’s a great choice.

And you came up with it on your own or you learned that from somebody?

I sort of came up with it on my own.

But, yeah, I mean, just knock the other person out.

It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.

I got to say that the relief there that I’m feeling is that you and I could get into the wonky jargon of this

And talk about objects and subjects and all that kind of stuff.

But sometimes, as native speakers of English, our intuition is just as efficient as really getting into the grammar of it, right?

Exactly.

That’s a great way to put it.

If you’d like an answer to your questions about language, call Grant and me at 1-877-929-9673.

Or you can email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Or you can call her and myself.

You had to do that, didn’t you?

Oh, there’s a 10-year-old boy in me somewhere.

He always likes to do the wrong thing.

Very close to the surface.

Very close to the surface.