LESSON 6

Pronoun Case

“Pronoun Case” is the topic that covers the common question of whether we should say “my
brother and I go to the park” or “My brother and me go to the park” - and many other
situations as well.

There are two ways to deal with this common error on the SAT & ACT, and in real life as well:

Method #1: Test each noun by itself and trust your ear (about 90% effective) or
Method #2: Think about it the “grammar teacher” way (this is harder to learn, but more
powerful – and allows you to achieve 100% accuracy and certainty)

I’ll explain both ways, and you can pick the one you prefer. I myself use a blend of both – I trust
my trained ear nine times out of ten, but when I’m uncertain, I take a “grammar teacher”
approach to support my decision.

Approach #1: Try Each Noun By Itself & Trust Your Ear
This first style of solving Pronoun Case issues focuses on four steps:

1. Noticing the presence of pronouns in the sentence,

2. Trimming the sentence down to its basics,
3. Occasionally rearranging word order without changing sentence meaning, and
4. Trusting your “inner ear” to determine the right pronoun to use (he/him? They/them? etc.)

We will practice each of the four steps when we look at the questions from the Pretest, but for
now let me lay them out for you:

Step 1: You should always be looking for pronouns on the SAT & ACT English grammar tests!
This step overlaps with at least three other important topics: Subject-Verb Agreement (Lesson
1), Pronoun Clarity (Lesson 4) and Pronoun Agreement (Lesson 5). Every pronoun should be
closely examined!

Step 2: Practice eliminating unnecessary detail (Prelesson B). As always, this is an important
tool you can use on every single SAT & ACT grammar question, so you should always eliminate
details, even if you are “pretty sure” you know what the grammar mistake is. You may be
surprised once the details are removed and the core of the sentence stands exposed.

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 Step 3: When the SAT & ACT writers test Pronoun Case, they sometimes make the sentence
appear more complicated than it really is by choosing a word order that is unnatural, compared
to your everyday speech. In such cases, you can beat them at their own game by applying
Prelesson C and re-rearranging the order of the sentence into a more familiar-sounding style of
speech.

Step 4: “Trust your inner ear.” Try changing the pronoun’s case (more details on this in the next
half of this chapter) in the reduced, re-ordered sentence. Then use the case that “sounds
better” to you. You won’t get it right every single time with this method, but you’ll get it right a
lot of the time.

Pronoun Case Quick Reference

 Always remain suspicious of pronouns!

 Pronoun Case on the SAT & ACT is often about choosing between “I” and “me” (or between
“us” and “we.”)

 Method 1: Eliminate unnecessary details and rearrange the sentence (apply Prelessons B and C);
then, trust your inner ear. This will work about 90% of the time.

 Method 2: If you want to get this topic right 100% of the time, you’ll need to study up on the
difference between subjects and objects and the pronoun subject/object chart (coming up next
in this chapter).

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Now we’re going to practice the first Pronoun Case method on a Pretest question:

Charles and me love to play dodgeball, and we have spent many an hour
engaged in this exciting pastime.

(A) [NO CHANGE]

(B) Charles and I love
(C) Charles and me loves
(D) Charles and I loves

Step 1: Notice the pronouns: “me” and “we.”

Step 2: Eliminate Details, with a twist.

First of all, we can reduce this sentence to “Charles and me love to play, and we have engaged.”

Now the twist: Try both “Charles” and “me” by themselves. You will have to change the plural
verb “love” to the singular form “loves,” but that’s fine - it’s just a natural result of applying this
pronoun test.

So, you’d try saying these two ways to yourself:

“Charles loves to play”/ “Me loves to play.”

Doesn’t that second version sound awful? Yes, because it’s wrong, and your ear knows it!

Step 3: Rearrange the word order if necessary. (No need to do that here; the sentence structure
is already in the most basic order.)

Step 4: Try saying the “problem pronoun” both ways. So you’d try:

“Me loves to play” / “I love to play.”

First one sounds awful, second one sounds good – so trust your ear; we should use the “I” form
of the pronoun, not the “me” form. That eliminates Choice A and Choice C.

We still have Choices B and D, but Choice D contains a Subject-Verb Agreement error (Lesson 1)
between a plural subject and a singular verb: “Charles and I loves.” (You should be getting good
at this Subject-Verb Agreement stuff by now!)

That leaves Choice B as the correct answer, because it uses the correct Pronoun Case and
avoids any singular-plural mistakes.

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Simplifying and Reorganizing Sentences

Let me show you some quick simplifying and reorganizing tactics on this next Pretest sentence:

“Is it right that us workers must suffer due to incompetent management?”

Eliminating details gives:

“Is it right that us must suffer?”

Rearranging and simplifying again gives the core of the sentence:

“Must us suffer?”

This sounds awful. Try it the other way:

“Must we suffer?”

Now it sounds much improved, and it is in fact correct this way.

Approach #2: The Grammar Teacher Way

Now, if you want to catch Pronoun Case errors every single time, you need to understand this
rule the “grammar teacher way.” What you need to learn (or review) first is the concept of
“Object” vs. “Subject.”

Every complete sentence has a subject. The subject does the action - for example:

“The dog barks.”

More complex sentences also have objects, for example:

“The dog barks at the mailman.”

Objects are required for situations where someone does something to something else.

The dog barked “at” the mailman; barking was the thing done to the mailman, so he’s the
“object.”

The “subject” is the dog, the main character, who happens to be doing the action like a subject
should.

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You usually don’t have to think about this stuff, except when you’re using pronouns like “it”
instead of dog and “him” instead of mailman. Let’s see what that would look like:

“It barks at him.”

OK, on this SAT or ACT this sentence would be wrong already because of Pronoun-Antecedent
Clarity issues (Lesson 4). However, let’s set that issue aside for a moment and deal only with
Pronoun Case. Here’s where we pull out our handy mental chart of pronoun case…

Oh wait, you don’t have one? OK, you can borrow mine for the moment! Make sure to get your
own (i.e. memorize this chart if you’re shaky on it):

Subject Pronoun Object Pronoun

I Me

He, She, It Him, Her, It

We Us

They Them

This chart represents a written version of “trusting your ear” from the previous four-step
approach to Pronoun Case. A lot of the time, your brain will just “know” this stuff through years
of practice and experience with the English language.

Now, can you add up the pieces of the “grammar teacher” way to handle Pronoun Case
questions?

1) We know how to tell the difference between a subject and an object.

2) We have a chart that tells us which pronoun to use depending on if it’s a subject or
object.

The dog was the subject, and has been replaced correctly with a subject pronoun from our chart:
“It.”

The mailman was the object, and has been replaced correctly with an object pronoun from our
chart: “Him.”

Therefore, the sentence “It barks at him” is correct in regards to pronoun case.

But, if we changed the sentence to “It barks at he,” for example, we would have a Pronoun Case
problem, because we replaced the mailman (who is an object in the sentence) with a subject
pronoun (“he”). Notice how the chart also supports what I’m saying.

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Let’s try the “grammar teacher” method on the following Pretest question:

Is it right that us workers must suffer due to incompetent management?

(A) [NO CHANGE]

(B) we workers must suffer despite
(C) us workers must suffer despite
(D) we workers must suffer due to

OK – first of all, we’re looking for pronouns, and one stands right out: “us.”

Who does “us” refer to (what’s the antecedent of the pronoun “us’)? “The workers.”

Is the pronoun “us” in the objective or subjective form? Check the chart: Objective.

Objective form means it’s not the subject, the main actor of the sentence, but the object -
having something done to it.

Now, think about the sentence as a whole. Does the sentence say anything is happening to the
workers? No, it says the workers are doing something: they are “suffering.”

If the workers are suffering, then they are the main characters of this sentence – they are the
subject. Therefore, any pronoun standing for “workers” in this sentence must be in the
Subjective Case.

Now, check the chart again for a reminder that “we” is the subjective form of “us.”

At this point we should check our answer choices: Choices A and C use the incorrect objective
form “us,” so they must be wrong.

Choice B and D seem almost identical at first, but notice the conjunctions they use: “despite” vs.
“due to.” A direct cause-and-effect is logical here, so the conjunction “due to” is the correct
choice over “despite.” If this confuses you, study Lesson 7 on Conjunctions. The correct answer
is Choice D.

Note: If this Subjective / Objective approach feels too technical for you, or you’re short on time
to prepare for your test, just stick with the previous method from earlier in this chapter:
simplifying/rearranging the sentence and trying each pronoun by itself, then relying on your ear
to help you. That will work for most questions, but it’s even better to understand this topic
from the technical angle as well.

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