(Editor’s note: To those readers out there who’ve been blissfully unaware of the latest Page 2 grammar smackdown, we love you best. Please go on with your bad selves and read the rest of this publication: Leave now. Save yourselves!!!!!)
It’s all Sally Helms’s fault. Sally, if you’d never written a letter to The Grammarnator (and asking US to pass it on to him, no less!), critiquing our pronoun use, among other things, we never would’ve responded to you publicly last week, and in the process acted as if we didn’t know what a pronoun was.
Now, whether we were messing with your collective heads, readers, or sincerely did not know what a pronoun was, you’ll never know. We’ll take it to our graves, laughing maniacally all the way. What we’ve learned from this experience is that we have some feisty readers (woman who left a verbally abusive voice mail message, you know who you are, and we hope you feel ashamed) out there. If Bob Pingree ever decided to go militia on this town, he would have a legion of followers faster than you can say “subject-verb agreement.”
Here’s some of the awesome mail we received last week. And we’ve hired a security detail, so don’t even think about coming after us until next month.
Can you hear me screaming?
Dear Insiders,
My first reaction, in reading your response to my letter about the grammatical error in the December 30 issue, was that you were joking.
My second reaction was that you were trying to egg me on, in an effort to elicit a lively response.
However, I eventually came to the sad conclusion that you truly thought the grammatical error to which I was referring was that the word “couple” should be treated as singular. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Your reply makes me realize that this particular grammatical error is so pervasive in both written and spoken English that even professional writers such as yourselves don’t recognize it.
The sentence in question:
“Luckily, a sweet looking older couple finished their food and let my companion and I have their table.”
The correct sentence should read:
“Luckily, a sweet-looking older couple finished their food and let my companion and ME have their table.”
Subjective pronouns – such as I, she, he, we and they – are used as the subject of a sentence.
Objective pronouns – such as me, her, him, us and them – are used as the object of verbs and prepositions.
If the person who had written the sentence had been dining alone, he or she would have written:
“Luckily, a sweet-looking older couple finished their food and let me have their table.” Adding another object – in this case a dining companion – does not change the case of the pronoun.
Yours grammatically,
Sally Helms
Were you drunk?
Today, I read the Grammarnator letter from Sally Helms in the 1/13-19/2009 edition of the Insider. The response was non-responsive, since it defended the use of the noun “couple,” when Sally had complained, I think, about the pronoun “I.”
Nonetheless, I would have let it pass, except the same error popped up in the Manchester Brewery tour – “Kevin was so kind as to pour Katie and I samples.”
I might chalk it up to slight inebriation, but let us clear up the grammatical point, shall we? The problem is use of the subjective case “I” when the objective case “me” is required. Perhaps a slight change will illustrate, by removing Katie from the scene. (I am sure she is a fine person, but for this grammar point she is superfluous.) Would you say, “Kevin poured I samples”? Or does that grate on the ear? Even with Katie (or anyone else) back in the picture, one still should use “me” to identify for whom Kevin poured.
Otherwise, a fine publication.
Martin Jenkins
Are you joking?
Re: letter from Sally Helms in today's Insider
Dear Bob (or the “Insiders,” pinch-hitting for him):
Your response to Sally’s comment about the Dec. 30 article fell a bit short – about 50 percent. You dealt with one grammar issue but were apparently blind to the more egregious error. I’m guessing that Sally’s “AAARRGHH” concerned the latter pronoun in this troublesome sentence.
Your answer raises three possibilities:
1) You’re kidding;
2) You’re testing to see if anyone reads this column; or
3) You actually think that “the couple let I have their table” sounds just fine.
Perhaps you should reconsider the practice of intercepting Mr. Pingree’s mail.
Cordially, from one who obviously has too much time on his hands,
Tom Fredenburg
Oh, here we go
Sally Helms wrote in to say that I had overlooked an agreement problem during the holidays by failing to correct a Foodinator remark: “Luckily, a sweet-looking older couple finished their food and let my companion and I have their table.” The Insiders thought that she objected to couple being followed by the plural pronoun their, and I agree with the Insiders that the collective noun couple works better when it is regarded as plural, so I too would have let their stand. The team held its first meeting six weeks before the start of the season, but the couple celebrated their anniversary in style.
However, I’m not sure that their was “the misuse of the pronoun” that irritated Mrs. Helms. I think it was I, and therefore it is impossible for me to overlook the same error in the Brewing Issue, especially when it was made twice in the same article by yet another Insider. And these are it: (a) “Kevin was so kind as to pour Katie and I samples. . . .” (b) “Koncord Kombat Ale was essentially a home run for both Katie and I.”
To make it brief, take Katie out of the picture, leaving us with “Kevin poured I a sample” and “It was a home run for I.” Surely the writer would have realized that something was wrong. Plural pronoun objects work the same way as singular ones: the beer gets poured for me, and it gets poured for Katie and me. And back in the Celery Stick Cafe, that older couple let my companion and me have their table. (And don’t substitute myself for me. Some folks seem to think that’s high-toned, but it’s merely an affectation.)
The Sports section of the Monitor had an interesting mistake on the same day, not made by the paper but by a basketball star being quoted. Of his appearance on the cover of GQ, LeBron James said, “You good good, you play good. I was brought up that way.” While Mr. James might like the repetition of good, he should have said, “You look good, you play well” (and perhaps substituted a semi-colon for the comma). Since fewer and fewer people seem to use well in such a construction, heads would have turned, jaws would have dropped, and takes would have doubled. But Mr. James could have replied to his startled audience:”Do the right thing and say the right word. That’s what I was taught.”
Lastly, language aficionados should take a look at Appaloosa, the western directed by Ed Harris newly available for rent. It’s truly surprising to hear a marshal use the word ineluctable while facing down a dozen toughies come to get their boss out of jail, and that ain’t got nothin’ on an alderman’s use of thrasonical in a later scene.
The Grammarnator
