Pronouns are words that stand in for nouns—he, she, they, him, her, them, etc.  Depending on whether the pronoun is acting as a subject (performing the action in the sentence) or an object (the action is being performed to it) the pronoun will either take the subjective or objective case.

For example, in the sentence “Rick gave the book to Maria,” Rick is the subject because he performs the action of giving the book, whereas Maria is the object because she receives the action by being given the book. If we were to replace Rick and Maria with masculine and feminine pronouns, we would use the subjective “HE” to replace Rick and the objective “HER” to replace Maria.  The sentence would then be “He gave the book to her.”

Here is a chart to help you remember pronoun case of some common pronouns.

This rule helps to explain the trick we taught you yesterday (about selecting the proper pronoun in compound noun forms).  If you are a native English speaker, your ear recognizes the correct pronoun by sound, whereas if you are a non-native English speaker, you will need to memorize this chart to learn the appropriate case.

When I was younger, if I ever announced that “Me and Chrissy went to school,” my parents would immediately correct me: “Chrissy and I went to school.”  It can be hard to remember which pronoun is correct in these compound structures.  Here’s a tip for choosing the proper one.

Use your ear. Read the sentence without the noun and see which pronoun fits.

Let’s do a test using our previous example.  Me and Chrissy went to school.   Does “Me went to school” sound right?  Wouldn’t we say, “I went to school”?  Therefore, it should be “Chrissy and I went to school.”

Here are a few more examples.

Leigh and me will make the reservations. Incorrect.

Leigh and I will make the reservations. Correct!

Ali threw a party for Stephanie and I. Incorrect.

Ali threw a party for Stephanie and me. Correct.

Brian met David and I at the restaurant. Incorrect.

Brian met David and me at the restaurant. Correct.

If you are a native English speaker, your ear can be an excellent tool for distinguishing the proper pronoun case.  Just remove the compound structure to avoid being confused.

In our next post, we’ll go over the reason this trick works.

A few quick capitalization rules:

Do not capitalize seasons.

“I’ll begin college in the fall.”

Only capitalize a profession if it is part of a title.

“I love my professor.”

“I love Professor Campbell.”

Only capitalize a subject if you are referring to a specific class OR the subject is a language:

“I studied German last year but this year I will study biology.”

“I already registered for History 204.”

Capitalize cardinal directions only if you are referring to a specific region:

“I grew up in the South.”

“My house is south of the highway.”

Capitalize family member’s names only when they are not used with a possessive:

“My mother and father were born in New Jersey.”

“Mom and Dad were born in New Jersey.”

Despite what many believe, a run-on sentence is not just a long sentence.   William Faulkner, for example, wrote plenty of lengthy sentences that were not run-ons. (He also wrote plenty that were!)  Here’s an example from the opening scene of  Faulkner’s short story, “That Evening Sun”:

“Monday is no different from any other weekday in Jefferson now. The streets are paved now, and the telephone and electric companies are cutting down more and more of the shade trees–the water oaks, the maples and locusts and elms–to make room for iron poles bearing clusters of bloated and ghostly and bloodless grapes, and we have a city laundry which makes the rounds on Monday morning, gathering the bundles of clothes into bright-colored, specially-made motor cars: the soiled wearing of a whole week now flees apparitionlike behind alert and irritable electric horns, with a long diminishing noise of rubber and asphalt like tearing silk, and even the Negro women, who still take in white people’s washing after the old custom, fetch and deliver it in automobiles.”

That’s a mouthful–but it’s not a run-on sentence.  All of the commas are placed correctly to split up the different clauses, and the colon works to differentiate the two independent clauses in the sentence.  If you wrote a sentence like this in an essay, your teacher might tell you to break it up because it’s too wordy, but your teacher should NOT call it a run-on.

Technically, a run-on is a sentence in which two independent clauses are improperly joined–either with a comma (called a comma splice) or no punctuation at all (called a fused sentence).   Briefly, an independent clause is one that contains a subject and a verb and can stand on its own; in other words, a dependent clause is its own complete sentence. A run-on does not have to be long at all.  Here’s an example, also from Faulkner:

“What else can I think about what else have I thought about”

While much shorter than the previous example, this is the run-on sentence.  Here’s the first independent clause: What else can I think about.  The second is: What else have i thought about. Both could stand on their own as full sentences, but they lack punctuation between them.  To correct the error, Faulkner should write, “What else can I think about? What else have I thought about?”

Here’s another example:

I don’t have to I cant ask now afterward it will be all right it wont matter

How would you punctuate this sentence?

It’s worth noting that both of the run-on examples come from the inner thoughts of a character in The Sound and the Fury .  Why might Faulkner use run-ons to convey someone’s inner monologue?