“Contractions started kicking in, and we found a great rhythm. We had a 14-hour session, her and I did. I sat there with her, right between her legs. We got tribal on it. We danced to it. I was DJing this native Brazilian music.” - Matthew McConaughey, describing his girlfriend Camila Alves’ labor
Matthew has made a common personal pronoun error: he has used an objective pronoun as the subject of a clause. The second sentence contains the clause “her and I did.” The subject of the clause is “her and I” and the verb is “did.” Separate the two parts of the compound subject to highlight the error:
- her did [This does not make sense.]
- I did [This makes sense.]
The pronoun “her” is objective; it can function as a direct object ["I see her."], an indirect object ["I gave her the book."], or an object of a preposition ["I gave the book to her."], but it cannot function as a subject.
To correct the error, replace the objective pronoun with a subjective pronoun:
“We had a 14-hour session, she and I did.”
Separate the two parts of the compound subject to test the pronoun:
- she did [This makes sense.]
- I did [This makes sense.]
Post a comment