Shortcut: I vs. Me (SAT Writing)

As I discussed in yesterday's post (http://ultimatesatverbal.blogspot.com/2011/05/between-you-and-me-right-between-you.html), any pronoun that follows a preposition must be an object pronoun (me, her, him, us, them rather than I, she, he, we, they).

I realize, however, that most people do not want to think about prepositions and subject and object pronouns, especially while they're taking the SAT, so now I'm going to give you the shortcut:

Whatever goes for singular also goes for plural  

The SAT almost always pairs pronouns with a proper names (e.g. Jesse and I; she and Maria), so if you cross out the proper name, you'll virtually always be able to hear whether there's an error.

Let's look at a couple of examples 

Incorrect: After nearly a month, the teacher finally returned the report to Sarah and I.

The first thing that we can notice is that we have a name (Sarah) paired with a pronoun (I). If we cross  out the words "Sarah and," we are left with:

Incorrect: After nearly a month, the teacher finally returned the report to I.

Would you say that? Of course not. You'd say, "The teacher finally returned the report to me." So you'd also say:

Correct: After nearly a month, the teacher finally returned the report to Sarah and me.

Or:

Incorrect: Tom and me went to the baseball game yesterday after school.

Cross out:

Tom and me went to the baseball game yesterday after school.

If you wouldn't say "Me went to the baseball game," you wouldn't say, "Tom and me went to the baseball game" either. The sentence should therefore read:

Correct: Tom and I went to the baseball game yesterday after school.