My blog and I on the internet.

There is a problem with this post's title. Can you spot it?

I'll give you a moment.

Still giving you a moment.

Stop reading for a second and take the moment.

...

The problem is the word "I." It should be "me."

Most native English speakers misuse "I" and "we" in plural, first-person, descriptionary phrases. And most overcompensate by just inserting "I" instead of "me" because, I don't know, it sounds smarter or something.

It actualallly sounds dipstickish.

So, if you're one of the numbnuts who can't determine which is the proper, singular, first-person pronoun to use in a plural possesive clause, you're in luck. Because I'm going to give you a simple way to sound so much smarter.


The We or Us Test
You are going to take your dog Skippy to a NASCAR* race and you want to tell your whole redneck family . You want to say "Skippy and _ are loadin' up the cooler and headin' to NASCAR!" Oh, shit! What singular, first-person pronoun should I use? (For the sake of learning, pretend that rednecks use proper grammar.)

The simplest way is the We or Us Test. Simply say your sentence two ways:
"We are loadin' up the cooler and headin' to NASCAR!"
or
"Us are loadin' up the cooler and headin' to NASCAR!"

Hopefully, you have enough undamaged-by-alcohol braincells to realize that "we" sounds normal and "us" sounds carnie-ish.
We=I Us=Me
So the proper way to say your sentence is "Skippy and I are loadin' up the cooler and headin' to NASCAR."

Here's another example.
You have a picture of Skippy and you at NASCAR. You want to label the picture on MySpace as "Skippy and _ at NASCAR." Hmm. Here we run into that little I-Me-I-Me problem again. Let's rewrite the sentence.
"We at NASCAR."
or
"Us at NASCAR."

This time, "us" sounds more natural. Hopefully. (I don't want to really explain why. Your head might explode if I start diagramming a sentence with direct object pronouns and predicates and indirect object pronouns and subjects and lions and tigers and bears.)
So, since "us" sounds better, you'd use the sentence with "me" instead of "I." "Skippy and me at NASCAR."

One last example.
It's another picture of ol' Skippy and you. Since your redneck friends are new to still images, you want to label your picture as "This is a picture of Skippy and _." Oh, fart, the first person pronoun is at the end of the description. Oh, golly gosh!

Don't worry. The test can get us through.

"This is a picture of we."
"This is a picture of us."

If you pick "we," you're telling everyone that this is a picture of urine (weeee weeee). If you pick "us," then you're right! And the proper sentence would use the word "me." Because we = I and us = me. And we can all live together in harmony.

Now go forth into the world a smarter, brighter, shinier person. And good luck to you.



*Nothing is cooler than NASCAR. Unless it's monster trucks. Those friggin' ROCK!