Luggage? Chisel? Check. Column ...
JUNE CASAGRANDE
Welcome to the all-purpose, generic, backup, vacation column -- the
one I wrote heaven knows how long ago just in case I ever got a week
off. Therefore, if you’re reading this, I’m either on vacation, in
jail, or both. Aloha. Bonjour. Ciao. Send bail.
Thanks to my brilliant foresight, strong work ethic and good
planning, I’m getting paid even though I’m not here! (However,
because of my pathetic business acumen, the amount I’m getting isn’t
enough to tip the cabana boy or split a carton of cigarettes with my
cellmate, Harriet the Hatchet.)
Yet, whether rubbing on sunscreen or fermenting orange drink in a
toilet bowl (strictly for use as currency), I can imagine no better
way to celebrate the occasion than with reader mail.
We’ll start with Ron Hendrickson of Newport Beach, who’s alarmed
at how many people don’t seem to know the difference between object
pronouns and subject pronouns. He writes, “I do believe this is
probably the most common noticeable error committed by supposedly
intelligent, educated people.”
I’ve made this exact same observation, amazed at how my own
editors will say, “If you have any questions, come see Bob or I.”
But Hendrickson can actually top that: “Just a couple of days ago,
Bob Woodward, Yale educated, highly experienced and famous Washington
Post columnist, while being interviewed on TV, referring to Mark Felt
(‘Deep Throat’), said, ‘He helped Carl and I.’ Wow!”
I’ll second that.
You’d never say, “Come talk to I,” or, “He helped I.” It’s the
same construction, yet throw in “John and” or “Sally and” and
suddenly we forget one of the most intuitive rules of our language.
There are two ways to know when to say “Carl and I” and when to
say “Carl and me.” The easiest is to just try the sentence without
“Carl and.” Instantly, it becomes clear whether you need a subject
pronoun or an object pronoun. “Carl and I talked to Deep Throat”
would then be, “I, not me, talked to Deep Throat.” “Deep Throat
talked to Carl and me” is correct because you’d say, “Deep Throat
talked to me,” not, “Deep Throat talked to I.”
David Lessley of Burbank has nicely summed up another rule that
can help in these situations.
“Prepositions always take the objective, not the subjective,”
Lessley writes. “I think I remember learning this in grammar school
and think we had to learn all the prepositions so we would know when
to use the objective.”
That’s just another way to understand why you do something “with
me” instead of “with I,” “to her” instead of “to she,” “at him”
instead of “at he,” and “for John and me” instead of “for John and
I.”
Our final letter to be read while I try to hula, or tunnel my way
out of jail, has less to do with grammar and more to do with an
increasingly common brain cramp. It’s from Dan Rosen of Glendale, who
points out a mistake I bet I’ve seen a dozen times but never noticed:
“These days, people use ‘one dimensional’ when they mean ‘two
dimensional.’ If something is shallow, has no depth, et cetera, we
can say that it is two dimensional rather than three-dimensional,
which refers to the three dimensions of width, height and depth. The
proper criticism of two-dimensional indicates that the third
dimension, depth, is missing. But now, even such august publications
as the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books have included
articles where the authors refer to a shallow character as
‘one-dimensional.’”
Perhaps the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books could find
a basis for defending this choice, but two out of two Dan Rosens and
June Casagrandes agree, that’s just goofy.
Aloha.
* JUNE CASAGRANDE is a freelance writer. She can be reached at
JuneTCN@aol.com.
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