Me, Myself and I

Don’t even get me started. I could rant for an hour about this topic, but I’m going to keep it simple and clear. Clarity is desirable. Rather than boring you with a long discussion about the nominative, objective, possessive and reflexive cases, I will illustrate this lesson with a series of examples.

EXAMPLE 1
Correct: “This ice cream is for you.”
Correct: “This ice cream is for me.”

If we put the above together, then the resulting sentence should match the *correct* originals: “This ice cream is for you and me.”

Do NOT say, “This ice cream is for you and I.”

EXAMPLE 2
Correct: “You and I should go to the store.”

We can test the correctness of this sentence by separating it into two sentences:

“You should go to the store.”
“I should go to the store.”

Do NOT say, “You and me should go to the store.”

EXAMPLE 3
A) “You are smarter than me.” FAIL.
B) “You are smarter than I.” [Ding-ding-ding!]

Sometimes we omit parts of sentences, and this is okay. The important thing is that we know *what* is missing so that we can correctly deal with what’s left. In the example sentence, there is a verb missing: “Am.” If we add it, then the second example is correct: “You are smarter than I am.”

Thinking about the sentence “You are smarter than me am” makes me want to swallow a fork.

Sometimes I get bored with a topic of conversation before the conversation is over. I was going to list examples dealing with use of “myself,” but I've lost interest. Now I'm thinking about muffins.