In Defense of I
A Momentary Diversion from Politics and Personal Philosophy

ELIZABETH GEORGE
June 30, 2026

I’m taking a break from serious writing to address an issue that requires even more serious writing: what appears to be the decline and fall of correct grammatical usage. I’ve pondered a number of ways to bring up this topic, but I haven’t been able to develop a manner in which to say this politely, so I shall just say it: Either the knowledge and use of correct grammar is dying altogether, or people are simply becoming less educated every year. I’m going to indulge myself on the topic in this essay, so bear with me.

All people make grammatical errors from time to time. But we’ve reached a point where the daily slaughter of the English language has reduced me to yelling at the television (which, admittedly, I do not need a grammatical error to do these days) or to asking plaintively in the midst of reading a novel: “Did this book even have a copy editor?” It sometimes seems as if it has become an act of pride on the part of some people to sound—how do I say it?—as linguistically inept as possible.

Admittedly, I love grammar. In elementary school, I found diagramming sentences a virtually orgasmic experience, so how lucky was I that Sister Agnetis apparently felt likewise (despite her advanced years or, perhaps, because of them). Thus, many hours in her classroom were given to using pens (fountain pens or cartridge pens only) and rulers to draw lines (both level and slanted) and to sketch parentheses upon which or within which correct nouns, pronouns verbs, adverbs, conjunctions and prepositions had to be correctly placed. Sister Agnetis’s students diagrammed sentences ad infinitum in lieu of needless subjects such as mathematics. So imagine my delight when, after years of toiling in the classroom, I was given a class to teach that was called “Advanced Grammar and Vocabulary.” Equally, imagine my delight when, for Christmas one year, my husband gifted me with a copy of Warriner’s, the holy Bible of grammar books. It was bliss.

Grammatical errors have become so commonplace both in speech and in writing that I would be hard pressed to address all of them. So I’m going to comment upon the worst of them: the abject failure of native speakers of English when it comes to understanding how pronouns are intended to be used and, in particular, the excruciating (at least to me) misunderstanding (really, it’s ignorance, but I’m trying to be kind) of how one two-letter word is meant to be used. That word is me.

Somehow, within the last two decades, native speakers of English have begun to use this little word as a pronoun in the nominative case. (There are, gentle reader, three cases of pronouns: nominative, possessive, and objective). What that means is that native speakers of our language have begun to use it as the subject of a sentence or as what is called a predicate nominative. For example:

Me and Tom are going to the store or Me and Joe will be right back after this commercial. There are, of course, two problems that need to be addressed when we look at those sentences. The first is obvious: in a compound subject, the pronoun isn’t positioned in the sentence before the conjunction (and) but rather after it. . However, saying Tom and me or Joe and me is equally incorrect. Tom and I are going to the store and Joe and I will be right back after this commercial are the correct versions of those declarative sentences. The pronoun I is in the nominative case, as are she, he, we, and they.

Because me is in the objective case, it can only be used as an object, an indirect object, or an object of a preposition. (People in the know will be ahead of me at this point, since they understand not only what a preposition is but also the fact that a preposition must have an object. The preposition and its object together are called a prepositional phrase. Here, then, is how one correctly uses me (or, for that matter, her, him, us, or them). If you’re keeping up with me, you also know that, if the object of the preposition is compound, then the objective pronoun will follow the word and (a conjunction, as are but and or). For example:

As an object: Bill saw me in the garden or Bill saw Mary and me in the garden.

As an indirect object: Bill gave me the flowers or Bill gave Mary and me the flowers.

As the object of a preposition: Bill saw John with me last night or Bill saw John with Mary and me last night.

All of those examples illustrate the correct usage of the objective pronoun me. [Let me add for the benefit of the curious or the frustrated that the pronoun me in the example of indirect object is an indirect object because it illustrates to whom Bill gave the flowers. Indeed, the sentence can be restructured to read Bill gave the flowers to me. Flowers are what he gave. He gave them to me. [The astute reader will have noticed that I’ve employed the use of another objective pronoun: them.]

The question is: why have we reached this ghastly pass? The next question is: Why did I title this “In Defense of I” when I spent so many words expounding on the use of me?

As to why we have reached this ghastly pass, I believe it began with the casual embrace of a colloquialism. (At least, I want to believe that is the case.) Perhaps the misusage became akin to an educated individual saying ain’t for amusing emphasis as in “I ain’t about to do that, honey,” eventually falling into common usage.

As to why I titled this piece “In Defense of I”, I must say this: while there will be people who accuse me of tilting at windmills, of being a pedantic old crow, of stubbornly refusing to accept neologisms (which brings up the burning question: can a grammatical error even be considered a neologism?), I remain convinced that grammar can be a glorious element in our everyday speech. Additionally, it requires us to think—even if only briefly—before we blurt out the first thing that comes into our minds.

Gentle reader, thank you for indulging me. I stand poised to excruciate you on the burning topic of butchered vocabulary soon.
 

© 2026 Elizabeth George
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