[Music]
one of the age-old grammar debates is
whether or not it's correct to say I am
good or I am well when someone asks you
how you're doing at Gotham writers
workshops where I teach grammar we teach
that either answer is actually okay and
I'm going to explain to you
why to understand the debate it's
important to know the difference between
between good and well good functions as
an adjective in a sentence which means
that it describes nouns and well
functions as an adverb in a sentence
which means it describes verbs my
favorite coffee cup has the phrase
superheroes do good I'm doing well which
is kind of a snarky way to say that well
is preferable to good let me show you
why in this instance it
is so in this case we have the word
good which is our
adjective do is our
verb and
superheroes is our
subject an adjective can't describe a
verb so good is not describing how the
superhero is doing good is describing a
noun and in this case it's sort of an
invisible word we might think of it as
super superheroes do good works or they
do good deeds good is describing the
work of the
superheroes I'm doing well in this case
we have the word well which is an
adverb which describes a verb in this
case the verb in our
sentence is doing the subject of our
sentence is
I so how am I doing I'm doing
well this is where it gets tricky and
where the debate comes into play say
that you ask me how I am and I just say
simply I am
well I might say I am
good in this sent sentence am is our
verb well is our
adverb and
I am the
subject normally we would think it would
be correct for well to describe the verb
but am happens to be something we call a
linking verb which means it's not doing
much action it's just linking the
subject to the verb so in this case it
can actually be okay okay to say I am
good using the adjective form to
describe I it's almost like you just
imagine that this is not here and you
can see good is describing I the
adjective is describing the noun so it
gets incredibly complicated and I think
life is a little too short to worry too
much about whether you need the
adjective form or the adverb form you
can be sure that whenever you're saying
I am good or I am well there's a Garian
out there who's willing to back you
up