Jim Daniel wrote a Letter to the Editor this morning calling out Sharon Eliza Nichols on a grammar point. Daniel criticized Nichols for saying in an interview, "I know I don't have 15,000 friends, so it's not just them who are buying it (her book)."
Oops, says Daniel. "She violated the rule that states the object of the verb 'to be' always takes the nominative case." She should have said, "...so it's not just they who are buying it."
Daniel is technically correct, BUT, as I have stated several times on this blog, a little leeway is allowed when a person is speaking casually and out loud. Most grammarians do not expect us to go through all the analysis every time we open our mouths. We use contractions, end some sentences with prepositions, and use WHO for WHOM out loud when we would be more careful and technically correct on paper.
Because Nichols was speaking out loud during an interview and making a casual rather than a formal statement, I don't have a problem with her choice of words.
I'd like to point out something else from Jim Daniel's pontifical letter to the editor. He suggested that Nichols "should have remembered the advice given us by Abraham Lincoln in his second inaugural address: 'but let us judge not, that we be not judged.'" I will take things a step further and judge Daniel who did not correctly attribute this advice. Although Lincoln used it in his second inaugural address, the advice actually comes from Jesus Christ who, in the King James translation of the Bible, is quoted in Matthew 7:1 as saying, "Judge not, that ye be not judged."
Do check out Nichols' Facebook page, which is generating a great dialogue about grammar glitches and pet grammar peeves.
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