{"id":8039,"date":"2021-04-15T10:10:40","date_gmt":"2021-04-15T14:10:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/?p=8039"},"modified":"2021-04-15T10:10:40","modified_gmt":"2021-04-15T14:10:40","slug":"us-or-we","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/us-or-we\/","title":{"rendered":"Us or We?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_8040\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter post-item__attachment\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8040\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8040\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2021\/04\/Small-world.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"640\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2021\/04\/Small-world.png 640w, https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2021\/04\/Small-world-350x350.png 350w, https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2021\/04\/Small-world-150x150.png 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-8040\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Image by\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/pixabay.com\/users\/geralt-9301\/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=550767\">Gerd Altmann<\/a>\u00a0from\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/pixabay.com\/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=550767\">Pixabay<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n<p>Welcome to another example of why English may be the most infuriating language in the world. Two of the most commonly used words in English are the pronouns <strong>Us<\/strong> and <strong>We<\/strong>. They are both first-person plural pronouns which mean <em>a group of two or more people<\/em>. Yet, they are very commonly misused even by highly educated native speakers. I recently heard one of the most respected medical experts in the U.S. improperly use <strong>us<\/strong> in a sentence last week and it made me cringe. Let\u2019s fix this problem.<\/p>\n<p>Us is an <strong>object pronoun<\/strong>, used grammatically as the object of the sentence. As an object pronoun, us is often preceded by a <strong>verb<\/strong>, or it will typically be preceded by a <strong>preposition<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cAll <strong>of<\/strong> us will march in the parade.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cHave a nice trip and don\u2019t worry <strong>about <\/strong>us\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cThose <strong>of<\/strong> us who have been here before know what to expect.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cYou can\u2019t <strong>tell<\/strong> us what to do.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cYou can <strong>believe<\/strong> us when we tell you that the movie is very funny.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Remember earlier when I wrote: <em>Let\u2019s fix this problem<\/em>? Let\u2019s is a contraction of <em>let<\/em> and <em>us<\/em>, and is always followed by a <strong><em>base verb<\/em><\/strong>. \u201c<strong>Let<\/strong> us <strong><em>fix<\/em><\/strong> this problem.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We is a <strong>subject pronoun<\/strong>, coming before the active verb and found either at the beginning of a sentence or, sometimes, at the beginning of a <strong>clause<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cWe saw this episode before.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cWe could not believe how beautiful the sunset was last night.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cIf you\u2019d like, we will come and babysit for you tomorrow night.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cWe hold these truths to be self-evident.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The key to identifying the difference between a subject pronoun and an object pronoun is its location in a sentence and its relationship to the verb or preposition. Which is why it is so obvious when the two pronouns have been misused.<\/p>\n<p>When I heard the medical expert speak on national television, he used a phrase to include himself among the larger group of his fellow doctors. He said, \u201cUs doctors believe in the science behind the medical trials for the vaccine.\u201d Well, that\u2019s wrong. And I hear that kind of mistake all the time.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s a clue: drop the noun that follows the pronoun. The doctors were the subject of the verb \u2013 <em>doctors believe<\/em>. Therefore, the correct phrase should have been, \u201cWe doctors believe in the science behind the medical trials for this vaccine.\u201d But, because you know that subject pronouns are found at the <u>beginning<\/u> of a sentence or clause, and object pronouns come <u>after<\/u> verbs or prepositions, you would have known that the medical expert should have used <em>we<\/em> instead of <em>us<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>He <u>could<\/u> have said, \u201cDoctors like us believe in the science behind the medical trials for the vaccine.\u201d But, he didn\u2019t. Proving that brilliant people still need to know basic grammar.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<img width=\"350\" height=\"350\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2021\/04\/Small-world-350x350.png\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2021\/04\/Small-world-350x350.png 350w, https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2021\/04\/Small-world-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2021\/04\/Small-world.png 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/><p>Welcome to another example of why English may be the most infuriating language in the world. Two of the most commonly used words in English are the pronouns Us and We. They are both first-person plural pronouns which mean a group of two or more people. Yet, they are very commonly misused even by highly&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-item__readmore\"><a class=\"btn btn--md\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/us-or-we\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":8040,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[134956,135139],"tags":[6,140674],"class_list":["post-8039","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english-grammar","category-english-language","tag-grammar","tag-parts-of-speech"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/138"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8039"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8044,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8039\/revisions\/8044"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}