And Me? And I? Who? Whom?

I absolutely love the English language.

As I sat down to write this newsletter, I thought to myself: “I’m not going to beat around the bush or come up with some fancy-schmancy way of introducing it, I’m just going to get stuck into my subject.”

At that point I couldn’t help but marvel at the wonder of the English language, with its idioms like “beat around the bush” and “you can say that again”.

Anyway. None of this has anything to do with this week’s topic.

This week’s topic is, in fact, two topics.

The first is when to use “me and” or “and me” and when to use “and I”.

Many people seem to think that using “me” is always wrong. It isn’t.

This leads to sentences like “You could have given your mum and I a chance to say goodbye to you!”

Others don’t think twice about saying “me”, which leads to sentences like “Me and your mum are going out for the night.”

Both these sentences are wrong.

The first one should read “Your mum and I are going out for the night”, while the second should be “You could have given me and your mum a chance to say goodbye to you!”

So how do you tell? The best way is to remove the other person from the sentence.?

Most of us would never consider saying “Me is going out for the night” or “You could have given I a chance to say goodbye to you!”, so don’t change it when you introduce a second person.

It’s really that straightforward.

My next topic is when to use “who” and when to use “whom”. This has a similarly simple rule.

If you consult a grammar book, you’ll discover that Who is used when you’re talking about the SUBJECT of a sentence, while whom is used when you’re talking about the OBJECT of a verb or a preposition.

That’s not much help, though, is it? I know grown-ups with degrees and top jobs who still struggle to remember the difference between nouns, verbs and adjectives, so trying to work out mid-sentence whether you’re referring to a subject or an object is never going to happen is it?

However, it becomes easier when you think of it this way.

Firstly, take whatever sentence you want to use “who” or “whom” in. Here, we’ll look at “the people who I was talking to last week” vs “the people to whom I was talking last week.”

To work out which is right, stick in a pronoun – he/him,?she/her,?they/them.

To do this, you might have to change your sentence around a bit; the sentence I’ve just used would become “I was talking to them last week.”

Because him, her or them sounds right, it’s “whom”.

Had he, she or they sounded right, then it would have been “who”.

So that sentence above should read “The people whom I was talking to last week.”

Here’s another example: You know that “Who spilt my pint?” is right because it would be “She spilt my pint”.

Similarly, it would be “Whom should I ask about applying for the job?” because the answer would be “The head of HR – you need to ask her.”

Let’s be honest, though; most people don’t bother with using “whom” at all in speech, or even in written English, apart from in phrases like “for whom the bell tolls” and “to whom it may concern”. You’re unlikely to lose business by using “who” on your website or in a LinkedIn post when you should have used “whom”.

But if you’re applying for a job, or sending a very important email to a very important client, then you might want to get it right. I hope this newsletter has made it a little bit easier to do just that.