1 FROM each pair of sentences below, which one is correct?

a. Is that you, John? ~ Yes, it is I.

Is that you, John? ~ Yes, it is me.

b. Who is at the door? ~ Me.

Who is at the door? ~ I.

c. Who invited Terry? ~ Me.

Who invited Terry? ~ I did.

d. It is me who said that.

It is I who said that.

2. Should “I” be used with “who”, and “me” with “whom”?

For example, “It was me whom they scolded”.

What about the following sentences:

It’s me who’s driving a car.

It’s I who am going to do that. – Yu Siong

1. Some of your sentences above are incorrect. Others are correct either in a formal situation or an informal one.

a. The answer to “Is that you, John?” is likely to be “Yes, it’s me.” (informal and more often used) rather than “Yes, it is I.” (very formal). If someone calls someone else “John”, rather than “Dr Lim” or “Mr Brown”, for example, the two people must know each other well enough to speak to each other in informal terms.

b. “Who is at the door? ~ Me.” is correct in an informal style.

Who is at the door? ~ I.” is incorrect in a formal style. It should be:

“Who is at the door? ~ I am.”

c. Both sentences are correct, but:

“Who invited Terry? ~ Me.” is informal

“Who invited Terry? ~ I did.” is formal.

d. Both sentences here are incorrect, not because of their pronouns, but because of the tense of the first verb in each sentence. The first verb should be in the past tense, like the second verb. The sentences would then read:

(i) “It was me who said that.”

(ii) “It was I who said that.”

It is interesting that Michael Swan in Practical English Usage finds a sentence like (i) very informal and a sentence like (ii) very formal, and suggests that we can avoid the two extremes by changing the structure of the sentences (p.405, 429.3). Those two sentences have a cleft structure, in which focus is placed on the first clause (“It was me/I”) by using an impersonal “it” + “be” verb (was) + pronoun before the relative clause (“who said that”).

However, following Swan’s suggestion, we can change these two sentences to: “I was the person/the one who said that.” which still retains the focus on “I”.

The structures “it was me who ...” and “it was I who ...” are still used, though, and below is an example of each from the Internet:

“When I was 17, I dreamt I was sitting in a publishing office and on the desk next to me was a book ... I knew it was me who’d written it ...” (Diana Evans, author of a novel with the unusual title, 26a, in an interview with guardian.co.uk Feb 27, 2005; guardian.co.uk/books/2005/feb/27/fiction1#Evans)

“I must tell your Lordships that it was I who introduced and carried through Section 28 as a Private Member’s Bill in the other place in 1987.” (Baroness Knight of Collingtree in the House of Lords on Dec 6, 1999; parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/ld199900/ldhansrd/vo991206/text/91206-10.htm)

2. It is not as clear-cut as that. “I” is the subject pronoun and “me” is the object pronoun, while “who” is the subject pronoun and “whom” is the object pronoun. In a sentence with the structure “It was I/me who/whom ...”, “I” is used with “whom” (which is the object of the relative clause) in a very formal style, as seen in the following sentences from books available on the Internet:

“I have always had a head for heights and enjoyed climbing the ninety-two-foot main mast. Because of this it was I whom the bridge [Captain and officers] normally detailed to strike the foretop mast whenever the Hood passed under the Forth Bridge at Rosyth.”

(From Flagship Hood: The Fate Of Britain’s Mightiest Warship, by Ted Briggs and Alan Coles, 1985; hmshood.com/crew/remember/tedflagship.htm)

“O Thor and O Loki, I will reveal to you now the deceits I practiced on you both. It was I whom ye met on the moorland on the day before ye came into Utgard.” (From the Irish writer Padriac Colum’s Children Of Odin: Nordic Gods And Heroes, 1920; gutenberg.org/files/24737/24737-h/24737-h.htm)

“I” is also used with “who” when “who” is the subject of a relative clause, as in one of the sentences you quoted: “It’s I who am going to do that.” This is written in a very formal style and resembles the sentence of Baroness Knight I quoted in answer 1.d above.

“Me” can be used with either “who” or “whom”, and “who” can be the subject or object of a relative clause in British English.

“It’s me who’s driving a car.” is written in an informal style, using the object pronoun “me” as a complement in the main clause (“It’s me) and “who” standing for “me” as the subject of the relative clause (“who’s driving the car”). In its use of “me” with “who”, the sentence resembles the sentence of Diana Evans I quoted in answer 1.d above.

In your sentence “It was me whom they scolded.”, “whom” is the object of the relative clause “whom they scolded” and stands for the object pronoun “me” in the main clause. This is used more often than the structure “it was/is I whom...” and is less formal, but not too informal. Here is an example from the Internet:

“In August 1936 at the Spanish frontier it was me whom Tom Wintringham was inspiring; only a short time later on the Aragon front it was from him that I was to learn my first lessons under fire.”

(From Very Little Luggage, autobiography of K.Sinclair-Loutit, spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk; spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Loutit5.htm)

Finally, here is an example from the Internet, of “who” as the object of a relative clause in a cleft sentence:

“But if it goes wrong it’s my problem – it’s me who my customers will see as the incompetent amateur.”

(Written by a computer programmer in an online diary Nov 8, 2005; radiac.net/diary/archive/2005/11/)

More of I and me

Could you clarify whether the subject or object pronoun is used in this sentence?

“Timothy is taller than I” or “Timothy is taller than me”?

I have been taught that the former is correct. – Joon Ho

“Timothy is taller than me.” is correct in informal speech or writing.

“Timothy is taller than I am.” is correct in formal speech or writing. Don’t forget the verb “am” after the pronoun “I”.

Define ‘yet’

May I know the meaning of “yet” when it is used in the following sentence?

“Yet, for a long time, this Mr AP always managed, somehow, to be unavailable to teach these students, whenever it was his turn to instruct them.” – Mr Learner

We use “yet” at the beginning of a sentence in order to add something surprising after what we have written in the sentence before that. Let me write a sentence before your sentence that will make your sentence surprising. Here are the two sentences:

“Mr AP seemed to have a lot of free time which he spent playing computer games with students in the hostel. Yet, for a long time, this Mr AP always managed somehow to be unavailable to teach these students, whenever it was his turn to instruct them.”

Instead of “yet” in that position, you can write “despite that” or “in spite of that”, or “nevertheless”.

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