Luggage? Chisel? Check. Column ...

JUNE CASAGRANDE

Welcome to the all-purpose, generic, backup, vacation column -- the

one I wrote heaven knows how long ago just in case I ever got a week

off. Therefore, if you’re reading this, I’m either on vacation, in

jail, or both. Aloha. Bonjour. Ciao. Send bail.

Thanks to my brilliant foresight, strong work ethic and good

planning, I’m getting paid even though I’m not here! (However,

because of my pathetic business acumen, the amount I’m getting isn’t

enough to tip the cabana boy or split a carton of cigarettes with my

cellmate, Harriet the Hatchet.)

Yet, whether rubbing on sunscreen or fermenting orange drink in a

toilet bowl (strictly for use as currency), I can imagine no better

way to celebrate the occasion than with reader mail.

We’ll start with Ron Hendrickson of Newport Beach, who’s alarmed

at how many people don’t seem to know the difference between object

pronouns and subject pronouns. He writes, “I do believe this is

probably the most common noticeable error committed by supposedly

intelligent, educated people.”

I’ve made this exact same observation, amazed at how my own

editors will say, “If you have any questions, come see Bob or I.”

But Hendrickson can actually top that: “Just a couple of days ago,

Bob Woodward, Yale educated, highly experienced and famous Washington

Post columnist, while being interviewed on TV, referring to Mark Felt

(‘Deep Throat’), said, ‘He helped Carl and I.’ Wow!”

I’ll second that.

You’d never say, “Come talk to I,” or, “He helped I.” It’s the

same construction, yet throw in “John and” or “Sally and” and

suddenly we forget one of the most intuitive rules of our language.

There are two ways to know when to say “Carl and I” and when to

say “Carl and me.” The easiest is to just try the sentence without

“Carl and.” Instantly, it becomes clear whether you need a subject

pronoun or an object pronoun. “Carl and I talked to Deep Throat”

would then be, “I, not me, talked to Deep Throat.” “Deep Throat

talked to Carl and me” is correct because you’d say, “Deep Throat

talked to me,” not, “Deep Throat talked to I.”

David Lessley of Burbank has nicely summed up another rule that

can help in these situations.

“Prepositions always take the objective, not the subjective,”

Lessley writes. “I think I remember learning this in grammar school

and think we had to learn all the prepositions so we would know when

to use the objective.”

That’s just another way to understand why you do something “with

me” instead of “with I,” “to her” instead of “to she,” “at him”

instead of “at he,” and “for John and me” instead of “for John and

I.”

Our final letter to be read while I try to hula, or tunnel my way

out of jail, has less to do with grammar and more to do with an

increasingly common brain cramp. It’s from Dan Rosen of Glendale, who

points out a mistake I bet I’ve seen a dozen times but never noticed:

“These days, people use ‘one dimensional’ when they mean ‘two

dimensional.’ If something is shallow, has no depth, et cetera, we

can say that it is two dimensional rather than three-dimensional,

which refers to the three dimensions of width, height and depth. The

proper criticism of two-dimensional indicates that the third

dimension, depth, is missing. But now, even such august publications

as the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books have included

articles where the authors refer to a shallow character as

‘one-dimensional.’”

Perhaps the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books could find

a basis for defending this choice, but two out of two Dan Rosens and

June Casagrandes agree, that’s just goofy.

Aloha.

* JUNE CASAGRANDE is a freelance writer. She can be reached at

[email protected].