Learn English – Formal writing: “…for the colleagues and {I/me/theself}.”

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I'm currently using Cambridge English Advanced 1. It's a book that contains past examination papers, and includes numerous samples of authentic writing. This material helps, candidates and teachers, understand what the examiners are ‘testing’ and how these papers are marked.

The assessment covers four categories: content, communicative achievement, organisation and language. Each category is awarded a mark between 1 and 5, so the maximum score is 20, and each mark has a brief note attached by the examiner.

Any errors of punctuation, orthography, grammar, appropriacy, and vocabulary are left intact. In fact, there are no corrections because the ‘examiner’ does not specify where the errors lie. This can be frustrating, even though spelling mistakes are rare at the advanced level, and errors in style, collocation or register are still relatively easy to identify, sometimes I'll read a phrase that forces me to ponder.

Dear Director,

[ TEXT ]

To conclude, this letter is a polite request to cover the costs of a 2 month language course for my colleagues and me. We would be very pleased if the company would do us this favour.

Yours sincerely

John Smith

The following marks were awarded

Content                    5    blah, blah, …
Communicative Achievement  2    blah, blah, …    
Organisation               3    blah, blah, …
Language                   3    blah, blah, …

I am able to pick out six minor errors in that brief extract, maybe some users will identify more, maybe some will identify fewer, and maybe some will say that the language used is perfectly acceptable. But if I can help a candidate attain that elusive B, I would be delighted.

I am interested in (what could be) the 7th error, emphasised in bold.

Because the letter of proposal is formal, I feel the phrase, for my colleagues and me, is jarring. I want to change it to for my colleagues and I, but the antecedent requires an object.

You would not say: “This is a request to cover the cost […] for I”. So, why use the subject pronoun I in the expression “my colleagues and…”?

  • Could I use instead, myself?

  • Which of the following is preferable in a formal written proposal?

…for my colleagues and me
…for my colleagues and I
…for my colleagues and myself

EDITED: I found a pdf file of the writing sample (11/11) if anyone is interested.

I've looked at the following question, Should I put myself last? "me and my friends" vs. "my friends and me" or "my friends and I" Some answers appear to be contradictory, the accepted answer says using I and me are both grammatical, which in my example is not true. Moreover, there's no mention of myself, as a possible solution, in the question.

Best Answer

When occurring as object of a preposition like this, both my colleagues and me and my colleagues and I would be found in the formal English of standard speakers. Of course, there are always people who'd like to try and rationalise the facts of the language into what they feel would be a more sensible way of doing things. But you can no more rationalise a language into common sense that you can rationalise your body into a more rational shape. If trying to make English into a different, more rational language, we could argue that because the first person pronoun in the co-ordination would appear in the accusative case if it appeared on its own as the object of a transitive preposition, it should appear in the accusative case when in a coordination:

  • a course for me
  • *a course for I (ungrammatical)

However, this ignores the fact that this pronoun is not the object of the preposition in the Original Example. The grammatical object of the preposition is a coordination of noun phrases.

Huddleston & Pullum say the following about non-subject co-ordinations with I as the second coordinate:

Because these coordinate nominatives are perceived to be associated with the avoidance of stigmatised accusatives in subject coordinations, they are often described as hypercorrections. This is to imply that they are 'incorrect', not established forms in the standard language. Construction [32i] with I as final coordinate is, however, is so common in speech and used by so broad a range of speakers that it has to be recognised as a variety of Standard English, and we will reserve the term hypercorrection for examples like [23ii] and [24].

An example sentence from [23i] is:

It would be an opportunity for you and I to spend some time together.

Regarding the CAE exam, it highly doubtful that the case of the pronoun in question is going to make any difference to the grade here. What is required is natural language of the appropriate style. Both me and I will suffice for this purpose. In terms of helping the student, I would tend to err on the side of range rather than absolute accuracy in any case if you are after one of those elusive higher grades.

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