Just because I don’t read The Straits Times every day doesn’t mean I have a poor opinion of it. Though it can be boring, it has certain standards. So I was taken aback by this frontpage headline on The Sunday Times — its sister paper — today: "Is this her?"
Er, shouldn’t it be "she"? I wondered looking at the pretty woman — a Mongolian model killed in Kuala Lumpur.
But my English is not up to The Straits Times’ standards. So I went online and checked a couple of dictionaries at home.
After all, it’s more natural to say, "It’s me" or "It’s him" instead of "It’s I" or "It’s he". So why was it jarring to read, "Is this her?"
It’s perfectly okay, according to Dr Grammar, who quoted:
"Patricia O’Conner, author of Woe Is I, says, ‘It’s OK to use It is me, It’s her, and similar constructions, instead of the technically correct but stuffier It is I, That’s he, and It’s she.’ "
But the expression sounded strange to me because it was so ambiguous.
The headline, "Is this her?", made me wonder: "Is this her what?"
There’s a difference between "him" and "her". "Him" and "me" are both pronouns. "Her" is not only a pronoun but a determiner too. So if anyone asks, "Is this her?", one may be excused for wondering if the question is about a woman or something pertaining to her.
No such misunderstanding is possible in the case of "him" and "me", which can never be used as possessives.
The misunderstanding could be avoided in the case of the woman, too, by using the grammatically correct "Is this she?"
But, no, The Sunday Times didn’t want to be correct; it wanted to be noticed. That it was.
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