It Sounds Wrong, but it’s Right

Last panel. Shouldn’t it be “wiser than me”?

Having the pronoun all by itself gives a strong direct object signal, “me.” But we have an ellipsis here. The last word is left off. The ‘correct’ sentence ends with “wiser than I am.” Now the “I” sounds right!

I should add a bit more information. That sentence has another ellipsis. Put “who is” after “someone.” Now, perhaps, you can see that “I” is a predicate nominative, not a direct object.

Okay, class, lesson’s over. Don’t feel bad; no one will notice if you get this kind of sentence wrong.

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I have to discipline myself not to answer unasked questions about grammar mistakes. Here’s the comic:

Now. How many of you wondered about the title to this post having “me” instead of “I”? After all, technically, linking verbs get predicate nominatives, not direct objects. But “This is I” sure sounds unnatural.

I think the grammatical solution would be to change the whole sentence to something like “This is something I would be tempted to do.” Yeah, it’s not as concise, and short headlines are generally better. Besides, using “me” gives me a point of grammar to write about!

Brooke McEldowney is one of my favorite cartoonists, partly because he does his grammar well. I’m certain this is intentional:

I’ve written about separable verbs (e.g. to gross out, to put up with) before. In the upper right corner you can do a search on “separable” to find my other posts on the subject. He’s following the bogus rule not to end a sentence with a preposition. (See those previous posts.)

And the “whom” is correct. “Whom” is the direct object, even though it serves as an interrogative.

First speech bubble. It’s correct!

That “whom” sounds wrong because we’re used to hearing the subject of the sentence first. That ‘whom’ is really the object of “of.” You can also say that the “whom” is introducing the noun clause that’s the direct object of “know”!

To fix the word order a bit, you’d have:

Do you know of whom she reminds me?

Of course now you have a rather awkward question. I fear that “who” will become the only form to appear at the beginning of a sentence regardless of the word’s function in the sentence.

PS—If it were me, I’d write. “Hey! She reminds me of someone I knew.”

PPS—Since I ran into it today, here’s a strip that gets it wrong twice. Second panel:

PPPS—And here’s one where he gets it right. First panel.

This post first appeared on The Writing Rag.

The previous post was mainly about the verbs lay and lie, but it made a brief reference to the transitive-intransitive dichotomy. Here’s an article that got it right, then got it wrong. Should help make the distinction clear.

First the headline, which is correct:

MSDN Magazine will publish its last issue, ending a Microsoft developer era

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/08/microsofts-msdn-magazine-for-developers-will-end-its-decades-long-run/#p3

And the article’s first sentence (it’s the subhead), which is incorrect:

The final issue of the print magazine will publish this November.

“Publish” is transitive! You always publish something! In this case they publish an issue.

• So to make that second sentence correct, they need to use either the passive (ick) by saying it will be published;
• Or they need to give the verb a direct object, saying something like they will publish the last issue this November.
• Or they could use an intransitive verb, saying the magazine will end in November.

See the difference? Good. Now you’re a grammar expert. For practice, go look for a few more examples.

I like pictures in these posts, so here’s a picture of the product that the magazine was all about.

This post first appeared on The Writing Rag.