<p>After the somber butler strode to the door and asked, "Who is it?" the mysterious vagrant replied, "It is me".</p>
<p>A. After
B. strode
C. Who
D. me
E. No error</p>
<p>why is "it is me" wrong, why should it be "it is i"?</p>
<p>Because it's grammatically correct.
Most of the English you see around you is wrong.</p>
<p>Because, even though we all say "It is me" nowadays, that is grammatically incorrect. The pronoun there is explaining WHO it (the person) is. Let's rephrase.</p>
<p>"Who is it?"
"It is I".</p>
<p>See, the pronoun "I" replaces the "Who", i.e. the subject. It's all very confusing; maybe someone can explain better than I can.</p>
<p>The verb "to be" is intransitive and linking.</p>
<p>Thus, the first person pronoun has to be in the nominative "subject" form instead of the accusative "direct object" form that it would take as the object of a transitive verb.</p>
<p>English has cases, similar to Latin or German (and Spanish, French, and the others, too, but those are less obvious, but completely applicable to this case)</p>
<p>The verb "to be" of which "is" is a form, takes a predicate nominative. Action verbs take objects in the objective case. For English nouns, their objective and nominative cases are exactly the same. For pronouns, however, they are different.</p>
<p>Nominitive: <em>I</em>
Possessive: my, mine
Objective: <em>me</em></p>
<p>Nominitive: He
Possessive: His
Objective: Him</p>
<p>Nominitive: She
Possessive: Her, hers
Objective: Her</p>
<p>Nominitive: They
Possessive: Their, theirs
Objective: Them</p>
<p>Nominitive: We
Possessive: Our
Objective: Us</p>
<p>If you know Latin, you'll know that the sentence should be "Est ego."
Spanish: "Es yo." not "Es me." or "Me es."</p>
<p>That being said, only a prescriptivist (one who says grammar has infallible rules) would argue that the correct phrasing is "It is I." A descriptivist would argue that since people say "It is me." more than "It is I," the latter is correct.</p>
<p>I'm guessing that you're not using the official book, eh? If the question comes up, the argument can be made either way, but I doubt it would come up on an official test.</p>
<p>If they ask a similar question, in which case "me" follows "is" (or another form of to be) side with using "I." The same situation applies to the sentences It is she, It is he, It is we, which are correct. The incorrect (but correct sounding) forms are It is her, It is him, It is us.</p>
<p>Now, this is a very long-winded explanation only applicable if you want to know why. </p>
<p>The simple solution would be to memorize when to use which; namely, use "me" after action verbs like "to kick" and "I" after linking verbs, like am, is, are, was, and were. Be, being, and been take objects as participles, meaning the correct form is "I haven't been myself lately."</p>
<p>By the way, that's the exact way to know how to use "whom" as well.
Nominative: who
Possessive: whose
Objective: whom</p>