by Jennie Ruby
Ring, ring. "Hello."
"May I speak to Jennie?"
"This is she."
This is one of the rare cases in which American speakers of English get the case of a pronoun following a linking verb right. This is she. In other situations that you will hear probably ten times a day we get the pronoun wrong:
- That’s him! (The apostrophe-s stands for is, and the pronoun should be he.)
- Don’t worry, it’s just us. (Should be we.)
- Hello, it’s me. (Should be I.)
In fact, when someone uses the pronoun correctly after a linking verb, we think it sounds funny. (That’s funny peculiar; not funny ha, ha.) Here are some correct examples:
- It is I. (Or as one of the three Musketeers might say, ‘Tis I!)
- The winners are we.
Linking verbs are non-action verbs, and the ones that cause the most trouble with pronouns are forms of the verb to be: is, are, was, were, will be, has been, and so on through the various tenses. When a pronoun follows one of these verbs, it should have the same case form it would have if it were in front of the verb. (Case forms are the different spellings of pronouns depending on the role they are playing in the sentence, for example, he as a subject versus him as an object.) A perfect memory aid for the correct case form with the verb to be is the old children’s rhyme "Old King Cole."
- Old King Cole was a merry old soul, and a merry old soul was he.
In other words, he was … and was he. The pronoun he is in the subject case form both when it precedes the verb and when it follows the verb. When you use a pronoun after the verb to be, make sure to remember Old King Cole, and use the subject form of the pronoun.
About the Author: Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Essentials of Access 2000" and "Editing with MS Word 2003 and Adobe Acrobat 7" to her credit. Jennie specializes in electronic editing. At the American Psychological Association, she was manager of electronic publishing and manager of technical editing and journal production. Jennie has an M.A. from George Washington University and is a Certified Technical Trainer (Chauncey Group). She is a publishing professional with 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing.
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