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I've seen two or three stories lately that don't have this correct, and figured it wouldn't hurt to post it:
The object of a preposition (like to or for) should be me and not I. Nearly all writers have no trouble with that.
But when a second object is added -- that's not a problem for Bobbie or me or the letter was addressed to Robin and me, a number of people incorrectly use I instead of me.
If you have any doubts -- most sentences, after all, are more complex than those two and may not be as easy to sort out -- an easy way to tell is to read the sentence to yourself omitting the other subject -- in the cases above, a problem for me and addressed to me. If you'd typed for Bobbie and I, re-reading it as for I should convince you that you have it wrong.
Hope some of you may find that helpful.
Eric
(It's futile, but while I'm here and discussing pronouns, one more time around for its:
There's no apostrophe in the possessive form its, just as there isn't one in his, hers, yours or theirs. (As someone pointed out last time I wrote this, that's not a completely fair comparison, but her, your and their don't have apostrophes either (g).)
It's is a contraction for it is. That's the only time an apostrophe-s should appear with it.
Its', which has shown up occasionally here, isn't a word. S-apostrophe is a possessive plural, and it is always singular.)
That takes me back to 6th
That takes me back to 6th grade English. Mrs Wilson always said," Take away the other person, now how does it sound?"
It's Karen
To which question my answer was:
To which question my answer was:
"Lonely"
Problem with rules
The problem with grammar rules is they are often arbitrarily in conflict with natural language. The rules of natural language (a la Chomsky, Pinker, et al.) say that the the phrase "you and I" is a headless construction and can go anywhere in a sentence that you could put a noun. The rules of English grammar say that all the pronouns in a compound should agree with the rules for case of a single pronoun. But natural language rules are what most people use to speak informally, not arbitrary grammar rules. So there is a conflict.
I would go ahead and use "you and I" at times in informal speech in a story, if it sounds more natural in the mouth of the character. Just like a child might say, "Me and Jim went to the playground," because "me and Jim" is also a headless construction in natural language rules. Such natural uses imitate reality for your readers.
But I would be sure that the speech of someone like an English professor violated the formal rules of English grammar only under the most extreme circumstances. In other words, only when it furthered my characterization and thus the story.
Even in narration, if the narrator is presumed to be someone who might not be careful with their words, such mistakes would be okay. I did such things in "Sam I Am" to good effect.
Your trick here works to sort out the correct usage, but it's worth noting that a writer does not always wish to be excruciatingly correct. :)
Goedel's theorem says something like: no system of rules describing a complex "space" can be both complete and completely consistent. Grammar sure ain't. :)
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
True...
...and when I'm proofing and/or editing fiction I do keep that in mind. I don't try to correct conversations (except for those involving English teachers; oddly enough I've run into those a few times, though not for this problem), unless I believe they're inconsistent with the character presentation -- in which case I point it out to the author.
I do have an annoying tendency to try to correct "you better" to "you'd better" in casual conversations, which I'm trying to scale back.
But it's neutral, third-person narration that I'm really concerned with, probably because my background is in nonfiction, and it's the only voice I feel comfortable writing fiction in myself. (Also, because I have the feeling, which may not be justified, that someone who's getting it technically wrong in their story should realize that they're doing so even if they have good reason for it.)
Eric
(Kept thinking, as I was writing my forum note, of the obscure late-1960s musical duo who called themselves Bobby & I. I had their only album; really enjoyed their cover of Lulu's hit "Best of Both Worlds". It's on YouTube -- though it didn't come up in the search function there -- along with the other 11 album cuts. Still an interesting and unusual sound, though I wasn't quite as impressed with it 40 years or so later.)
Rules are meant to be broken
I do the plural to singular bit, its generally effective. But I didn't learn it at school, my mother actually taught it to me. The other rule she taught me was the old can/may thing. Like if I wanted to go outside and I asked 'Can I go outside?', she'd look at me and say 'I don't know, can you?'. The rules were in effect any time she was home. There was implied message in it, if we got it wrong the second time we weren't going anywhere. But I don't have her checking my grammer anymore, and like I said in the Subject Line, rules are meant to be broken. ;-)
I attempt to follow the rules when its the narrator, but anything goes in dialog. Very few people speak technically correct English. If they do then they come off as anally retentive assholes. English teachers get a free pass.
I went outside once. The graphics weren' that great.
My rule of thumb
Its/it's is a problem, but one of many. My rule of thumb is that in narration, grammar and spelling should should be hard and fast by the rules. However, dialog can be however the character speaks, so long as it's consistent. Spelling, on the other hand, should always be correct unless it's altered to give us a look at the character's accent. Then it should be consistent, that is, accented one time and not the next. The only time when spelling can be altered is when it's not consistent is when someone is intentionally mispronouncing a word, such as "Yeeesss?" or, "Ooookaaay."
Since I almost always download the stories and read them in my word processor I'm a compulsive editor and find it difficult not correct as I read.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann
Learned something now
Thank you, Eric. And also a thank you to all the others who have posted about common grammar and orthography errors.
These posts and comments are a help to me for my job as translator. I can appreciate the difference between narration and speech, and formal and/or legal/technical writting. As Erin nicely put it in her comment, when you write natural "speech" you sometimes have to chuck the grammar rules, in order for your writing to sound natural. While in legal or technical texts precision is very important.
Jessica
Can so be a word!
Consider this awful school story:
I Did Consider...
...something similar: "The writer had managed to use the word "it" 15 times in a three-paragraph story. But the kicker was that the its' type face was different from the rest of the words." (Though in that one, writers who learned their rules from Strunk & White or by reading older material would use its's. And I'd hope that nobody'd actually construct that second sentence that way, grammatical as it may be; there are a lot of ways to say that which would be much easier to read.)
Yours is much better (g).
Eric
Exposition
...and dialogue. You can write whatever you want (within reason) in reported dialogue because it is exactly that: a report of what people say, often grammatically shnrdlu.
Regarding it's
... it's not ONLY a shortened form of 'it is' - it's also a shortened form of 'it has', e.g. "It's been and gone." or "It's happened often in the past." or, in the words of the Willie Nelson song, "Well, hello there / My it's been a long, long time "
Most get confused because of the apostrophe used elsewhere to indicate possession - Robert's ball. Philip's mindset. Queen's crown.
"It's status" can be considered the 'exception that proves the rule'; so the status belonging to 'It' is written as "Its status".
The trouble nowadays is that many have begun to think that plurals require an apostrophe. And that is plain wrong.
Apostrophes are there ONLY to indicate EITHER possession OR missing letter or letters.
My Own Pickle
I try to keep things as correct as possible in my writing, although I will violate rules that I deny -- for example, "Don't end a sentence with a preposition," and "Don't split infinitives." (Notice my choice of "will" vs. "shall" as well -- although I routinely use "I will" when the mavens say that it's "I shall". It's one of those bizarre rules I deny.)
I know perfectly well the difference between "its" and "it's", and among "their", "there", and "they're". (Notice my choice of "between" and "among".) Nevertheless, in these and many other rules, I'm virtually guaranteed to write the wrong word a good fraction of the time. I usually catch them; all too often, I don't. Something in my mind switches between my intent and my fingers.
I've written "know" when I meant "no". As I said, something in my mind switches. I only notice it after it happens.
Then there was the time I was setting a flag: I wrote "ON NODATA" and the person with me said it was NO_DATA, saying, "NO underscore DATA". Well, next thing I noticed, I was typing, "NO_UNDERSCO..."
-- Daphne Xu
Thanks
Wish all authors here are as open to advice. There is one popular author here who insisted up and down that her spelling is wonderful and that her husband, being an engineer and all, helped her edit and reacted with high dudgeon when told otherwise.
There is a mug I want
that has a bunch of those rules
/sigh I really miss the Oxford comma :(