A Comprehensive Guide to Subjective and Objective Case Pronouns

When I was in eighth grade, my Language Arts teacher taught us how to diagram sentences. Subjective and objective case pronouns, transitive and intransitive verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, adjectives, adverbs—sometimes, I thought my head would explode.

Every week, we ran through a new part of speech, until we could diagram sentences longer than even Charles Dickens would have known what to do with. Using prepositions (and not ending sentences with them like I just did), placing vocative commas, identifying the difference between direct and indirect objects—we could do all this and more at the age of thirteen. Generations before me could probably do it a lot younger. Hopefully, they continue to teach the generations after mine how to do it, too.

Cruel and unusual for a bunch of kids? Maybe. But it also made me appreciate how words fit together. After all, when you know how to use words properly, you know how to abuse them better.

And that’s when writing gets fun.

So today, we’re covering what trips up writers most when it comes to sentence diagramming: what are subjective and objective case pronouns?

Sentence Diagramming for Noobs

We’ll only be looking at, more or less, three parts of speech today: subjects, verbs, and objects.

If you don’t know what a verb is… this might not be the post for you. It’s the action word. If it just describes the act of being, it’s known as a “linking verb.” (More on this later.)

The subject is the noun (you know this one—person, place, or thing) that does the action described by the verb. In the sentence, “She runs,” she is the subject and runs is the verb.

Still with me?

To do the actual diagramming part, draw a cross. Place the verb in the top right section and the subject in the top left, as shown below. Congratulations! With a subject, a verb, and a complete thought, you’ve just diagrammed a complete sentence.

The verb “runs” in this context is intransitive, meaning it makes sense if it is exerted by itself, and not on something else. Some verbs, however, can only be carried out if another person or object is involved. These are called transitive verbs.

Take “tears,” for instance. If I write, “She tears pages,” the sentence makes sense. “She tears,” on the other hand, isn’t a complete thought. She tears… what?

So what part of speech is the word pages in the above example? That’s the object of the sentence, the thing being acted upon. To diagram the object, extend the horizontal line of the cross and add another vertical line on the upper half, like so:

If the verb is a linking verb (ex. is/are/am/was/were/be/being/been), the diagram looks a little different. Because the object of the sentence is really the same thing as the subject—the verb itself marks them as being one and the same—it is called the predicate noun. We denote this by slanting the second vertical line on the diagram toward the linking verb. Below is the diagram for the sentence, “This is she.”

Subjective vs. Objective Case Pronouns

Did you notice that the last sentence said, “This is she” instead of, “This is her?” That’s because there are two main types of pronouns.

Pronouns are just words that replace nouns. Common ones include they, she, who, it—the list goes on. Some pronouns look different depending on the part of speech they describe (subject or object). For example, if a pronoun takes the form of the subject, as he does in, “He carried it,” the pronoun is said to be a subjective case pronoun. Vice versa for the object, like him in, “She carried him”—him is an objective case pronoun.

Some pronouns, like it, don’t change depending on part of speech. Other pronouns do. Pronouns that do change have subjective and objective case versions. Some examples of these pairs include:

• He and him
• She and her
• They and them
• Who and whom
• I and me

Rule of thumb: if a pronoun stands for the subject of a sentence, use the subjective case, and vice versa for the object. It sounds simple enough, but it can be tricky to identify. We screw it up so often in our vernacular. (How many times have you used “whom” today? Probably fewer than you were supposed to, if you wanted to be “correct.”)

Some common mistakes include:

• Using the subjective case after a preposition. In most cases, pronouns in a prepositional phrase are the objects of the preposition, as in, “between you and me.”
• Using the objective case after a linking verb. When you pick up the phone or walk in the front door, if you want to be technically correct, don’t say, “It’s me!” Instead, say, “It is I!” (But let’s be honest, not many people are going to start doing that anytime soon.)
• Being afraid of the word “whom.” It’s only one letter off from “who.” If you don’t over-emphasize it, I promise you don’t sound pretentious. And the more people who start using it correctly, the more common it will sound. “Who’d you see?” is wrong. “Whom did you see?” is right. You don’t have to care, but in case you do, there it is. As I said earlier, once you know what’s right, you can abuse the English language in style.

The Bottom Line

There’s so much more to sentence diagramming than what I’ve shown here—this is just the tip of the grammatical iceberg.

Of course, you don’t need to diagram each sentence before you write it, covering the page with crosses and scribbles. Just be aware of the words you’re using. Know the rules so you can break them. After all, if you don’t know the correct way to phrase something, how can you give your characters the option of saying it correctly?

(The same holds true with punctuation. You might want to study up on the correct usage of colons and semicolons, for example.)

Your characters may avoid using proper grammar—most people do. Your characters may not know how to speak correctly. They may not have had a proper education, or they may not want to come across as sounding pretentious; these are valid reasons for a character to speak in a way that is technically incorrect. As long as that character’s speech is consistent throughout the story with what they would plausibly know, this is fine.

The bottom line is this: know how to say things correctly, but don’t stress out about it. As long as what your characters are saying makes sense, and as long as your prose flows smoothly, your readers will forgive you.

Did you have to diagram sentences in school? What’s your take on using “proper” grammar in writing? How do you approach your characters’ grammar? Tell me all about your process in the comments—I’d love to hear from you. And, as always, happy writing!

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