Database Underground | Sean McCown » Good IT Grammar

January 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Good IT Grammar

TAGS: General Database

One of the things that's always gotten on my nerves is bad grammar. I'm not just talking about the little nitpicky stuff like split infinitives and dangling participles either. I'm talking about the big stuff that's so easy to get right.

When I first sat down to write this post I was going to preach to you about acting like a business professional, and that you can't expect the officers of your company to give you their kind of money when you can't even string 7 words together into a grammatical sentence. However, on further reflection, your board of directors doesn't know any more about grammar than you do, so it's all good. That doesn't mean however that you shouldn't at least try to learn a couple simple rules to make yourself sound more like you've been speaking English for longer than a year or two.

So here are a couple simple rules that you can't live without.

When to use I:
Nobody seems to know when to use I and when to use me. I'm always hearing things like this:

Jim called Tammy and I into the room.
He gave a piece of gum to both Tammy and I.

Those are of course both completely wrong. The grammatical way to say that is:

Jim called Tammy and me into the room.
He gave a piece of gum to both Tammy and me.

OK, so how do you tell the difference? How do you know when to use I and when to use me? Well, it's easy, I is subjective, and me is objective.

What that means is you use I when it's the subject of the sentence, and you use me when it's the object of something... like an action... more specifically, when it's the object of a preposition (more on that in a minute).

So what does that really mean, here are a couple examples.

I like pie. I is the subject.
He gave the pie to me. Me is the object of the action. Me receives the pie.
Tammy and I like pie. This time both of us are the subject.
He gave the pie to Tammy and me. This time both of us are the object.

So the easy way to know when to use I or me with multiple subjects or objects is say the sentence to yourself first with you as the only participant. Now, whatever you use with only yourself in the sentence is what you use with multiples.

So if you say:

I like pie. Then you have to say...
Tammy and I like pie.

If you say:

He gave me some pie. Then you have to say...
He gave Tammy and me some pie.

You could never say:
He gave I some pie.
Therefore you can't say:
He gave Tammy and I some pie.

OK, I was going to give you a couple more, but I know how people tend to glaze over when you start talking about grammar.

Take this one and see how you do with it. If you like it, let me know and next time we'll work on who and whom.

Posted by Sean McCown on January 10, 2007 07:02 PM

RATE THIS ARTICLE: