I’m sure I am not alone in rejoicing at the end of the election campaign season.\u00a0 I’m tired beyond belief of the scary, horror movie off screen voices telling us that the world as we know it will end if such and such a candidate is elected or not.\u00a0 It’s over.\u00a0 It’s done.\u00a0 I voted.\u00a0 Some of my folks and issues won.\u00a0 Others did not. Now can we all just take a breath and find something to smile about? ( In view of the remainder of this post, to put that previous sentence in a proper grammatical light, I should probably have said, “about which to smile.”\u00a0 About is a preposition.\u00a0 It should be followed by an object, but in this case, I’m having my cake and eating it, too.)<\/p>\n
Of course, it’s not only the campaign advertising that has set my teeth on edge.\u00a0 This week I found myself yelling at the TV set during MASTERPIECE THEATER!!!\u00a0 And what was it that sent me into a tantrum?\u00a0 Several times in the course of one program, characters said “Between you and I!”\u00a0 Hell’s, bells you hounds!” to quote my much loved but still dreaded senior English teacher at Bisbee High School, Mrs. Medigovich.<\/p>\n
Between is a preposition.\u00a0 Because prepositions* are NOT to end sentences with, prepositions are usually followed by objects of prepositions.\u00a0 And if those objects happen to be personal pronouns they need to be in the objective case.\u00a0 Here’s a handy dandy reminder about personal pronouns.<\/p>\n
Subjective case:\u00a0 I, you, we, they, who.<\/p>\n
Objective case:\u00a0 Me, you, us, them, whom.<\/p>\n
As you can see, you is a switch hitter.\u00a0 It goes both ways.<\/p>\n
The subjective case is used when the personal pronoun is the subject of a sentence.\u00a0 Tom and I went to the store.\u00a0 NOT!\u00a0 NOT!\u00a0 NOT!\u00a0 Me and Tom went to the store.\u00a0 Putting Tom’s name first is a matter of being polite rather than a point of grammar.\u00a0 For years I’ve attempted to teach members of our family that “Mean Tom went to the store,” is more a complaint about Tom’s behavior than it is about something they did!<\/p>\n
So back to Masterpiece Theater.\u00a0 No one in his or her right mind would say, “Between we.”\u00a0 Doesn’t work.\u00a0 Doesn’t sound right.\u00a0 Between us does.\u00a0\u00a0 So why on earth would “Between you and I” work?\u00a0 It doesn’t.\u00a0 At least not for me.\u00a0 (Did you notice that?\u00a0 For is a preposition followed by the personal pronoun me–objective case.)<\/p>\n
I think one of the best lessons ever in how to misuse personal pronouns is from the following:<\/p>\n
Me love has flew<\/em><\/p>\n Him did I dirt.<\/em><\/p>\n Me did not know<\/em><\/p>\n Him were a flirt.<\/em><\/p>\n So them in love<\/em><\/p>\n Let I forbid<\/em><\/p>\n Lest they be done<\/em><\/p>\n Like I be did.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Him has gone.<\/em><\/p>\n Him has flown.<\/em><\/p>\n Him has left I<\/em><\/p>\n All alone.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Us cannot come to he.<\/em><\/p>\n Him cannot come to we.<\/em><\/p>\n I was never meant to was,<\/em><\/p>\n So writing poetry’s all I does.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n If you fix the grammar, it doesn’t rhyme.\u00a0 I don’t care.\u00a0 You are not going to force me off my grammatical high horse.\u00a0 I went to the store.\u00a0 Tom and I went to the store.\u00a0 Between us NOT\u00a0 Between we.\u00a0 And definitely NOT Between you and I.<\/p>\n And while I’m at it, \u00a0don’t get me started on the difference between gerunds and participles.\u00a0 Gerunds are ING words used as nouns.\u00a0 Participles are ING words used as adjectives.\u00a0 I have a very colorful way of bringing the difference between the two home, but it’s probably not fit to print at the PI.com website.\u00a0 And it would make those of you who drink coffee while reading this blog splatter coffee all over your computer screens.<\/p>\n Wait a minute.\u00a0 I just remembered.\u00a0 When I started reading Zane Grey in third grade, there were occasionally parts of words that were blanked out.\u00a0 I soon figured out that that the first part of —-ed was probably damn.\u00a0 So I’ll just let you fill in the blanks.\u00a0 Gerund:\u00a0 —-ing is good.\u00a0 Participle:\u00a0 No —-ing way!<\/p>\n Thus endeth the grammar screed for the day from an English Major who obviously endured far too many election campaign commercials.<\/p>\n Amen, sister.\u00a0 Preach on!<\/p>\n *In case you came of age after the educational system stopped teaching parts of speech, here’s a handy guide to some often used prepositions:\u00a0 up, down, in, out, over, under, for , before, beside, between, behind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m sure I am not alone in rejoicing at the end of the election campaign season.\u00a0 I’m tired beyond belief of the scary, horror movie off screen voices telling us that the world as we know it will end if such and such a candidate is elected or not.\u00a0 It’s over.\u00a0 It’s done.\u00a0 I voted.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[49,63,81,7],"tags":[153],"class_list":["post-726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-politics","category-rants-and-raves","category-writing","tag-rants-and-raves"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-bI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=726"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":728,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726\/revisions\/728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}