A Word, Please: Idiom takes the wind out of proper sails

They say marriage is all about give and take. Compromise. Meeting each other halfway.

But to read my emails over the years, you could only conclude that marriage is about something quite different: winning. Specifically, winning arguments. More specifically, winning arguments about grammar.

And I’m the referee.

Here’s an email from a reader named Harriett and it’s typical of the disputes I’m often asked to resolve.

Dear June: “Is ‘It was him’ correct or is ‘It was he’ correct? It all boils down to whether him/he is the object of the verb. My husband and I (not me) are in an argument as to which one is correct. I am banking on ‘him’ — not my husband, that is!”

Sometimes it’s fun to get questions like this. Sometimes it’s not. The difference usually rests on whether the person who’s writing to me is right. When that’s the case, I get to break the good news. Otherwise, I’m the bearer of bad news, which isn’t as fun.

So was Harriet right? Or was it her husband?

Harriet based her answer on the belief “It all boils down to whether him/he is the object of the verb.” In most cases, that would be true: The choice between “him” and “he” usually rests on whether the pronoun is functioning as the object or subject of a verb. That’s because “him” is an object pronoun and “he” is a subject pronoun.

Compare “The company hired him” to “He took a job with the company.” In the first, “him” is the object of the transitive verb “hired.” So it’s in the form of an object pronoun. In the second example, our pronoun is now the subject of the verb, so it’s in what we call the nominative (subject) case, “he.”

So if Harriet had it right that “It all boils down to whether him/he is the object of the verb,” then she would be the winner because the correct form take the object pronoun him: “It was him.”

But in this case, all that object pronoun business is moot. That’s because the verb in our sentence, “was,” can’t take an object. Only transitive verbs do that. “Was,” a form of “be,” isn’t a transitive verb. It’s something called a linking or copular verb. These types of verbs have a very different relationship with the word that follows them than the relationship of a transitive verb and its object.

Linking verbs — which convey being, seeming or the senses — always point back to the subject. “Be,” “seem,” “appear” and “become,” “feel” and “taste” are just a few examples of linking verbs. In “He is president,” the word that follows the verb isn’t an object. It’s a more like a mirror image of the subject.

Have you ever wondered why people say on the phone “This is she” instead of “This is her”? This is called the predicate nominative, which means that the second part of the sentence, just like the first, uses the nominative (subject) case, “she,” instead of the object “her.” The second noun essentially repeats the subject of the sentence. That’s why a subject pronoun is more grammatical than an object in “This is she,” “The culprit was I” and “It was he.”

So, according to these rules of syntax, Harriet’s husband wins. But syntax isn’t everything. There’s also something called idiom, which is a structure that, though it defies the mechanics of syntax, is nonetheless correct because it’s standard usage. The power of idiom means that, though “It was he” is grammatical, “It was him” is also acceptable, albeit arguably less proper.

So as I told Harriet, both she and her husband are right. But if there’s a steak dinner on the line, she’s buying.

JUNE CASAGRANDE is the author of “The Best Punctuation Book, Period.” She can be reached at [email protected].