Celebrity English

"There are many parallels between my son and I. We both wear diapers. I don't have a problem, but I'm too lazy to go to the bathroom. It saves me time." - Will Ferrell, in In Touch Weekly

Will has incorrectly used a subjective pronoun as the object of a preposition. This particular error, which involves the preposition "between" and a first person singular pronoun, is quite common; it is important to recognize this error because it often appears in questions on standardized examinations.

In the first sentence of Will's statement, the preposition "between" has a compound object: "my son and I." To understand the nature of this error, replace the preposition with one that does not require two objects and pair it with each of the components of the compound object.

• for my son and I: for my son/for I
• to my son and I: to my son/to I
• by my son and I: by my son/by I

These examples demonstrate that using the subjective first person singular pronoun "I" as the object of a preposition does not make sense. Replace the subjective pronoun with an objective pronoun to correct this error:

• for me
• to me
• by me

These prepositional phrases make sense.

This version of Will's statement replaces the subjective first person singular pronoun "I" with the objective first person singular pronoun "me."

"There are many parallels between my son and me."