When you were growing up, did your parents ever correct you by saying something like, “No, it’s Susie and I.”?
Oftentimes, they were correct, but I think this popular correction has led to a practice of actually using “I” incorrectly.
For example, consider this sentence:
Grandma brought chocolates for George and I.
Even though to some people it sounds right, it’s actually wrong.
You see, “I” is a subject pronoun. In other words, you use it to refer to the subject of the sentence: the thing in the sentence doing the main action of the sentence. The object of a sentence is the thing having the main action done to it.
I throw the ball.
In the above example, “I” is the subject because it is the thing doing the throwing. On the other hand, “the ball” is an object because it is the thing being thrown.
In our first example, “Grandma” is the subject because she is the one who brought the chocolates, which are one of three objects. George and the speaker (in this case, “I”) are the other objects.
The original sentence should actually read like this:
Grandma brought chocolates for George and me.
An easy way to determine which pronoun to use without having to decipher subjects and objects is to create separate sentences with both objects:
Grandma brought chocolates for George.
Grandma brought chocolates for I.
See? The latter example sounds wrong. Well, that’s because it is. “Grandma brought chocolates for me” sounds much better.
Now, this common misuse isn’t restricted to just “I” and “me”: I see it all the time with “him” and “he” and “her” and “she”. Here is a small table of examples of incorrect sentences with their corrected version.
| Wrong | Right |
| Grandma brought chocolates for George and I. | Grandma brought chocolates for George and me. |
| Her and I went to the store. | She and I went to the store. |
| His wife and him are coming to visit. | His wife and he are coming to visit. |
| The arrow landed between she and I. | The arrow landed between her and me. |
| Us Canadians love maple syrup. | We Canadians love maple syrup. |
What do you think of subject and object pronoun usage? Let me know in the comments below.