Legal Writing

There is no I in grammar, but there is one in etiquette

By Pam_Nelson

A reader left a message for an editor last week, saying that we had made a grammar error in the first sentence of the lead story of the Weekend section. Here is the sentence:

Last weekend, I, with the help of several friends, went on an eating tour of Durham.

Before returning the reader's call, the editor asked those of us nearby to help her spot the error in the sentence so she would be prepared to discuss it with the reader. We puzzled over it for a while, but we could not figure out what the reader had found wrong.  I guessed that the reader didn't like the prepositional phrase "with the help of several friends" set off by commas. 

When the editor and the reader finally connected, we found out that the reader objected to the writer's putting I first. The reader suggested that the writer should have written: 

Last weekend, with the help of several friends, I went on an eating tour of Durham.

I don't object to the reader's suggestion. That would have been a fine editing change, but the published version does not violate a grammar rule.

Apparently, the reader's point was that when we write a sentence that includes involving a first-person singular pronoun (I or me) and other people acting or being acted upon, we should always put the other people first. Here are the examples:

My sister and I went to the store. [not I and my sister]

My mother took my brother and me to the doctor's office. [not me and my brother]

I remember being taught this in the early grades. Indeed, in the English, Grade 3 book that I have from the 1940s (not the book I learned from in the 1960s, but similar), a section titled "Putting I Last" reminds children that "Speaking of yourself first is not polite. When speaking about yourself and others, always speak of yourself last." 

The book properly considers this a rule of good manners, not a grammar rule, but because this passage is found in an English book, people can be forgiven for thinking that it is not "proper" English to use the first-person pronoun first.  Also, because this etiquette rule probably came up when our teachers were trying to explain the use of I as the subject and me as the object, people got the manners rule mixed up with the grammar rule. I remember hearing my teachers admonish us not to say, for example, "Me and my sister went to the store," and to say instead, "My sister and I went to the store." The rules of manners and grammar became the same thing. 

Of course, the worse consequence of this teaching is that people think that me is never the right pronoun to use when they are writing about themselves and other people. So we have the grating constructions such as "Please give the list to Jake or I" or "My mother took my brother and I to the doctor's office." Even worse, people substitute the reflexive pronoun: "Please give the list to Caroline or myself" or "My mother took my brother and myself to the doctor's office." (Pardon my pedantry, but these  constructions make my stomach turn over. I despise the use of -self pronouns where they aren't needed.)

If our teachers had known how mixed up we were going to be later about these rules, they might have questioned their teaching methods, their curriculum or even their career choice. Bless those teachers, though, for trying to teach us both grammar and manners. 

Full post as published by Triangle Grammar Guide on May 31, 2010 (boomark / email).