I received a phone call last week from a grammar friend who was appalled to find this sentence in a National Geographic publication:

            "When he invited my wife and I out to dinner with him and his fiancee,
            I jumped at the offer."

Perhaps I’m more tolerant than my friend. I hear this overcorrection so frequently in speech, that I’m no longer appalled, just slightly annoyed. For those scratching their heads and wondering just what is the problem, lady, it's the first use of the pronoun I.

In the sample sentence, the object of the verb "invited" should be "my wife and me," the objective case—me, him, her, them. The second I is correct because it is a subject and rightly the nominative I —he, she, they.

The problem arises because we are so afraid of misusing an objective pronoun as a subject—him and me jumped at the offer—that we overcorrect and change a perfectly correct me to I. Overcorrection usually—but, alas, not always—happens when there is a noun coupled with the pronoun. If that noun confuses you, get rid of it and read the sentence without it: When he invited I out to dinner. Thanks for talking with I.

I’m too much of a lady to tell you how those two examples sound to my ear, but I hope you get the idea!

After I decided to write this blog about the misuse of the nominative I, examples leaped out from all directions.

        •   Luke Russert, whom I find to be an amazingly articulate and intelligent young
            man, speaking on NBC about his father used “my mother and I” several times
            as the object of prepositions when he should have said “for my mother and me”
            and “to my mother and me.”

        •   An editor sent an email to a colleague saying,
            "Thanks so much for taking a full hour to chat with Victoria and I.”

        •   And someone sent me an email that asked,
            "Can you meet with Lynn and I tomorrow?"

So faithful readers, tune up your ears, listen to your colleagues, and, when necessary, gently remind them to use me as a direct object or as an object of a preposition.

Last weekend the scorching weather forced me finally to turn on the AC and take refuge inside away from weeding and pruning. I dipped into Jimmy Buffett’s A Pirate Looks at Fifty and, in a section where the author reminisced about his school days and writing about his summer experiences, encountered the phrase “in 400 words or less.”

Hmmm. In 400 words or less? In 400 words or fewer? Is one correct and the other wrong?

Much as I like to be neat and tidy, much as I see value in clear, consistent rules for writing, I also think we grammar gurus can be too dictatorial, insisting that there is only one correct way. We become Theodore Bernstein’s Miss Thistlebottom, expressing our own pedantic rights and wrongs.

Fewer/Less is not one of Miss Thistlebottom’s hobgoblins, yet I can imagine her saying, “ ‘Word’ is definitely a countable noun and ‘fewer’ should be used with countable nouns. Therefore one should say, ‘In 400 words or fewer.’ ”

But wait, Miss Thistlebottom. Can it not be argued that “400 words” is a quantity, a collective noun of sorts, as Mr. Bernstein himself argues in The Careful Writer? Shouldn’t Mr. Buffett be allowed to write “400 words or less” as a proper and accepted idiom? Shouldn’t grocery checkout signs be allowed to say “15 items or less,” which is easier on my ear than “15 items or fewer”?

I find myself favoring “less” in such instances, but tolerantly allowing others the use of “fewer.” This is a point of grammar that can be negotiated.

A colleague comments: “I agree with you that 15 items or less is fine. I just like the fact that where I shop uses the more formal form!”

Not all points of grammar can be negotiated. For instance, a pronoun used as a direct object must be in the objective case: me, not I. There is only one correct way to write “he invited my wife and me out to dinner.” To say “he invited my wife and I out to dinner” is just wrong, wrong, wrong.