Grammatically Correct: The writer's essential guide to punctuation ...

GRAMMAR
4. Old King Cole was a merry old soul, and a merry old soul was (he/him).
5. It seems that my main competitor in the caber-tossing contest will be
(she/her).
6. I felt that the last person I could trust with the chocolate truffles was
(he/him).
7. The main suspects in the great Spam heist were (they/them).
8. A fine pair of fashion plates are (we/us)!
Answers
1. I
2. I
3. she
4. he
5. she
6. he
7. they
8. we
A pronoun following any form of the verb "to be"-am, are, is, was,
were, will be, etc.-takes the subjective case, because it renames or
restates the subject. In sentence 1, I renames the subject it; in
sentence 5, she renames the subject competitor, and so on. If the
wording were switched around, it would be clear that the pronoun
is acting as the subject: I was the only attendee still awake at the
lecture; she will be my main competitor.
In everyday speech, most people would probably say it's only
me, the only attendees still awake were Miranda and me, my
main competitor will be her. If you don't feel comfortable either
way, consider recasting the sentence. For example, Miranda and
I were the only attendees still awake at the lecture.
Normally a personal pronoun is used instead of the noun it refers
to, as in all the examples above, but in some constructions it may
be used in addition to the noun. How do you tell, then, if it takes
the subjective or the objective case?
Exercise
1. (We/Us) drudges would like to have the afternoon off.
2. There's nobody here but (we/us) drudges.
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