The Editor’s Manual
Free learning resource on English grammar, punctuation, usage, and style.
Contractions are common in speech and informal writing but avoided in formal texts.
Use “each of” with singular verbs to refer to every one of a group separately. “Each of” may be followed by a plural, gender-neutral pronoun. In spoken English, “each of” is sometimes used with plural verbs to refer to an entire group.
When “each” is part of the subject of a sentence, it is used with singular verbs, except when it follows a plural noun. “Each” may be used with a plural pronoun in an indefinite reference.
Both “than I” and “than me” are grammatically correct, since “than” can be used as either a preposition or a conjunction. “Than I” is seen more often in formal usage.
“It’s me” and “This is him/her” are generally acceptable in everyday usage. The strictly correct alternatives, “It is I” and “This is he/she,” are confined to highly formal usage.
“I” is a subject pronoun, while “me” is an object pronoun. In formal styles, use “I” in a compound subject and “me” in a compound object. “Me” is generally preferred in comparisons and after the “be” verb.
Use “you and I” as the subject and “you and me” as the object in a sentence. Avoid hypercorrection. “You and me” is used more often after the “be” verb and in comparisons.
Use “I” instead of “me” when it forms part of the subject (“You and I can work on this together”). When pronouns are joined using “or” or “nor” to form the subject, the verb should agree with the part closest to it (“Either you or I am right”).
Use there is or there’s when the noun that follows is singular (“There is a dog”) and there are when the noun is plural (“There are two dogs”). There’s is sometimes also used with a plural noun in speech and informal writing (“There’s a dog and a cat on the rug”).
Data can be a plural noun (“the data are”) or a singular mass noun (“the data is”). As a mass noun, it is used much like the word “information.”