| Subject | Object | Possessive Adjective | Possessive Pronoun | Reflexive | Number | Gender |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FIRST PERSON | ||||||
| I | me | my | mine | myself | singular | neutral |
| we | us | our | ours | ourselves | plural | neutral |
There isn’t much to say in this section and it is here largely for completeness. It is interesting to note that many people are often confused about the use of I/me/myself and mix them up a fair bit, even thought they would never make the same errors with we/us/ourselves.
Being the subjective (or nominative) form I should not be used when it is the grammatical object especially after verbs or prepositions. Instead me should be used. It is rare to make this error when the pronoun comes immediately after the verb or proposition as in:
The nurse wants me over there. She was beckoning to me on the way in.
But when the pronoun is moved away from the verb it becomes less obvious that me should still be used:
The nurse wants you and me over there. She was beckoning to you and me on the way in.
As a result sometimes you hear:
The nurse wants you and I over there. She was beckoning to you and I on the way in.
A common case of this problem is the phrase “between you and me”, which is often changed to “between you and I”, again both pronouns are the object of the phrase and while this makes no difference for you it demands the use of me instead of I. A phrase of the same construction such as “between me and my dog” would never produce “between I and my dog” because the me is directly governed by between.
This is exacerbated by the hypercorrecting aunt who insists that one should always say “you and I” instead of “you and me”. Consider the following:
Jim and me left before the rest.
Here the me should be I and no one would make this error when writing.
They farewelled Jim and me before the rest.
Here the me is the object and so perfectly correct. But a lack of understanding of the subject/object distinction lead to incorrect correcting. Not a huge problem and unlikely to be noticed in spoken communications but would raise eyebrows in formal writing.
Some people feel overly conscious about using me as if they are in some way attracting attention to themselves and replace me with myself.
This was a gift to myself from my wife.
There is no need to do this, it actually draws more attention than using the more usual form.
This was a gift to me from my wife.
Often these minor sorts of mess ups can be quickly worked out by rephrasing the sentence in another person or in a plural form. Compare:
This was a gift to ourselves from our boss.
and
This was a gift to use from our boss.
There is also a case of people using me instead of my.
I rode around there on me bike.
This is only ever written when depicting dialogue. However in the spoken form it is hard to say if this is a swapping of the two words or a change in the pronunciation of my.
Also see:
Part Zero — The problem with the English language is you!
Part Two — Second person pronouns
Part Three — Third person pronouns
Part Four — Miscellaneous, Conclusion and References