“It is I” – pronouns with “to be”, a la Shmoop.
This is the most important day of Phoebe’s life.
She clutches her cell phone, waiting for the call.
Then, it rings!
And she answers…
A deep voice asks, “Is this Phoebe Williams?”
“It is I!”
Phoebe replies breathlessly…
Okay, wait just one minute.
Phoebe, this is the day of days, the moment of moments… and you lead with, “It is
I!”?
Phoebe’s grammar isn’t wrong here.
In fact, her grammar is perfect.
But come on…
“It is I!”?
This is the twenty-first century…
…not Regency England.
The problem is…the grammar rule for pronouns with “to be” truly is stuck in the past.
Here’s the rule.
When a pronoun follows a linking verb, the pronoun should be in the subjective case.
Let’s start with linking verbs: What are they?
Well, they’re verbs that are less about action and more about connecting words together.
For example, “run”, “jump”, “scream”, “dance”, and “explode” are action
verbs.
These are things people do.
“Is”, “seem”, and “appear”, however, are linking verbs.
They’re more about describing a state of being than an action.
As for the whole subjective-case pronoun thing, there are three pronoun cases…
...the possessive case, where pronouns express ownership…
…the objective case, where pronouns are the objects of prepositions or verbs…
…and the subjective case, where pronouns are used as the subjects of sentences.
Subjective case pronouns include “I”, “you”, “he”, “she”, “it”,
“we”, “they”, and “who”.
Normally, subjective case pronouns appear at the beginning of sentences.
For example, the subjective case pronoun “she” starts the sentence, “She answered the phone”…
…and the subjective case pronoun “we” starts the sentence, “We heard her scream
for joy at the good news.”
However, in the case of this one grammar rule…
…where, when a pronoun follows a linking verb, the pronoun should be in the subjective
case…
…we’re going to see subjective case pronouns at the end of sentences.
And now that we’re all clear on our definitions, it’s example time!
If two little boys are found in the middle of a mess of glass at Whole Foods…
…and the store manager asks which child was responsible for sending twelve dozen bottles
of organic root beer crashing to the floor…
…good grammar requires that the boys point to one another and say, “It was he!”
If a hostess at a crowded pizza parlor yells that a table for ten is ready for the Shreveport
Wizards and Warriors Syndicate…
…she’s likely to hear a bunch of nerds holler back, “It is we!”
Proper grammar also dictates that we use subject pronouns after the words “than” and “as”.
Here’s why…
Say we have the sentence, “Nina was more excited to go hunting for ghosts in the old
asylum than they were.”
Sounds good, right?
It’s a perfectly reasonable sentence.
But what if we shorten it by chopping off that last “were”…
…so that we get, “Nina was more excited to go hunting for ghosts in the old asylum
than they”?
Or what if we have the sentence, “My little brother wants to see the Dallas Cowboys lose
as much as I do”?
Again, here’s a sentence that sounds great to the ears, until we hack off that last “do”…
…so that we get, “My little brother wants to see the Dallas Cowboys lose as much as
I.”
These sentences involving Nina and the Cowboys-hating kid brother sound normal when
they’re long…
…and out-of-date when they’re slightly shorter.
But the shorter versions of these two sentences explain why there’s a grammar rule that
insists on placing subject pronouns after “than” and “as”.
Now that we’ve drilled home the rule that pronouns following linking verbs should be
in the subject case…
…and that subject pronouns should also be used after the words “than” and “as”…
…it’s time for some good news.
This rule is not as hard and fast as it seems.
If Grandma Betty can’t make out which boy in the picture of the youth league baseball
team is her grandson…
…grammarians won’t flip out if the kid points to his likeness and says “That is
me” instead of “That is I”.
If four girls are brought before the principal and asked to ‘fess up to writing a Burn
Book…
…the English language will not die if the Queen Bee leads off with, “Well, they’re
guiltier than me” instead of “They’re guiltier than I”.
See, even grammarians recognize that placing subject pronouns after linking verbs…
…and the words “than” and “as”…
…sounds wrong, stilted, absurdly proper, and just plain odd.
So, when we find ourselves in casual conversation, or if we’re engaged in informal writing,
it’s cool to break this particular grammar rule.
And now back to Phoebe, who has just learned, not that she got into Harvard…
…and not that she’s going to be on the next season of “The Bachelor”…
…but that she gets to be drum major next year.
Different strokes for different folks…