Is it Just Me, or is the Difference Between ‘I’ and ‘Me’ Confusing?

Do you remem­ber when you were a lit­tle kid, and you would ask your par­ents whether “me and Friend X could go out and play”? Do you remem­ber being reminded that it is actu­ally “Friend X and I”? When I was younger, I received this par­tic­u­lar gram­mar cor­rec­tion from my par­ents all the time. And it led me to believe that one should use I in all instances when you are talk­ing about two or more peo­ple, one of which includes you.

It wasn’t until I was older that I real­ized that the mis­use of I and me is almost every­where. As such, it is no sur­prise that I got this one par­tic­u­lar gram­mar point wrong for most of my life. If you, too, find “I” and “me” con­fus­ing, then here are a few steps to remem­ber how to use each word correctly.

1. Learn the dif­fer­ence between sub­jec­tive and objec­tive case.

The most impor­tant way to really learn any rule is to under­stand why it exists in the first place. “Me” is an objec­tive pro­noun, mean­ing it is used when it is refer­ring to an object. An object, gram­mat­i­cally speak­ing, means that it receives action instead of caus­ing action. So, for exam­ple, in the state­ment “Mike helped him,” Mike is the sub­ject, because he causes the action. He helps him. “Him” receives help, and there­fore is the object in the sen­tence. Remem­ber the dif­fer­ence between actor and receiver, and know­ing the dif­fer­ence between sub­jec­tive and objec­tive case becomes easy.

2. Learn the objec­tive case pro­nouns of all sub­jec­tive pronouns.

Now, to extend your abil­ity to use all pro­nouns cor­rectly, not just know­ing when to use “I” or “me,” it is impor­tant to learn every objec­tive case pro­noun for its sub­jec­tive coun­ter­part. Mem­o­rize the fol­low­ing chart:

Sub­jec­tive           Objec­tive

I                            Me

He                        Him

She                      Her

It                          It

They                    Them

We                        Us

Who                     Whom

3. Do the sin­gu­lar test if still aren’t sure.

If you still aren’t quite sure, there is an easy test to deter­mine whether you are using I or me cor­rectly. Most peo­ple use the pro­nouns incor­rectly when there are used in com­pound form. For exam­ple, “He and I went to the store” has a com­pound sub­ject (mul­ti­ple sub­jects). If you aren’t sure which pro­noun to use, make the sub­ject or object sin­gu­lar, using only the pro­noun, like this:

“She sat on him and I.” -→ “She sat on I.”

The sec­ond sen­tence, once made sin­gu­lar, obvi­ously looks and sounds wrong. Let’s try it again:

“Jeff and I are going to the store.”→ “I am going to the store.”

Here, the sec­ond con­verted sen­tence makes sense, indi­cat­ing that the use of the pro­noun is cor­rect. If you were to replace the ‘I’ with ‘me’ you would see that it is clearly wrong: “Me am going to the store.”

Once you break down the rea­sons for rules, and you learn lit­tle tricks like the one above, you’d be sur­prised by how many of your gram­mar issues are resolved.

By-line:
Mar­i­ana Ash­ley is a free­lance writer who par­tic­u­larly enjoys writ­ing about online col­leges. She loves receiv­ing reader feed­back, which can be directed to mariana.ashley031 @gmail.com.