I vs Me and Making the Right Choice

Quick Grammar Help

Photo by Pro Church Media on Unsplash

Writers, I love you. You know I love you. I am one of you. And I’m also the least perfect person in the world when it comes to my own writing.

That disclaimer aside, we all need to get this one bad-boy of grammar right, okay?

It’s I vs Me.

I have two big points about this, which means this will be a short post!

THING ONE:

You can’t just interchange them.

Here, listen/read/look at these two sentences:

• Hammy and I found a zombie unicorn.

• Hammy and me found a zombie unicorn.

Which one seems right to you?

Hint: It is not the second sentence.

Spoiler: That means it’s the first sentence.

Why is that, you might wonder?

Well, it’s because of the grammatical construct. That’s a fancy sounding phrase, right?

So, here’s the big difference:

• I is super important. It’s just one letter of importance and it tends to start the sentence because it is so important that it is THE SUBJECT OF THE SENTENCE! Think about it, right, if you take Hammy out of that sentence in our example it becomes: I found a zombie unicorn or Me found a zombie unicorn. Here’s another hot tip: If your sentence sounds like Cookie Monster might be talking, then you’re probably using Me when you should be using I. I is the subject of the sentence, me is not.

• What is Me then? Well, the object of a sentence is ME. So, if someone else is doing the action? That’s when ME is used. Here’s an example: Hammy found me, the zombie unicorn.

Easy, right?

That leads us to my second point.

BIG THING TWO:

If you are writing high fantasy or low fantasy or sexy fantasy, your princes, kings, queens, and princesses do not get to break this rule without sounding ridiculous. They do not sound smarter or wealthier or more royal if they use the I as the object of the sentence, too.

If anyone is going to know this rule, it’s going to be a ridiculously well educated member of royalty.

You do not want to write:

The princess said, “Come to I, you sexy unicorn hamster, and we will make dragonlings and have happy sex.”

You just want the princess to say,

“Come to me, you sexy unicorn hamster, and so on.”

There you go!