Haven’t Seen this Mistake for a While

Back in the days of yore, when cigarette companies were allowed to advertise in magazines, an ad created a big row by having the headline “Us Tareyton smokers would rather fight than switch.”

I think every English teacher in the country was up in arms for their usage of the objective case (us) for the subject of a sentence. I recall at the time that saying things like “Us kids all hate English” sounded fairly normal, though I understood the distinction. I think the English teachers won that battle, because I haven’t heard or seen that construction for a long time. Then this appeared:

Us humans are pretty good at making our presence felt wherever we live out our resource-intensive lives.

It’s in an article about the Pacific Northwest in New Atlas. Take out the word “humans” and the mistake becomes immediately obvious.

Now a test: is this sentence correct?

Most of us humans are pretty good at making our presence felt wherever we live out our resource-intensive lives.

If you said it’s correct, good for you! The subject of the sentence is “Most,” and “us humans” is the object of “of,” so now the objective case is appropriate.

I hope the writer was just trying to be old-fashioned.