What is grammatically correct when answering the phone: "This is her" or "this is she"?

Question

And why? What about "This is me" vs "this is I"?

Answer 1

Okay, so this is a bit on the tricky side. The answer is BOTH.

HOWEVER, if you want to be an English teacher, or if you talk to an English teacher or Major, or Grammar, etc, the answer is "This is I," and "This is she/he." The reason for this is that in traditional senses, the verb "to be" (which "is" is a part of) is something like an equal sign, meaning that one side must be the exact same case (subject, object, etc) as the other side. So then if you reverse an expression like "He is a Doctor," you get things like, "A doctor is he." Here you see it remain in as "he" instead of as "him."

ON THE FLIP SIDE, most people SAY "This is me," (or rather "It's me") and "This is her/him." In fact, because of this common usage, it's grown into an idiom, and is becoming accepted even by English Grammarians. Linguists, like myself, have accepted both usages as natural, since we don't judge language, just describe it. We can also see this in expressions like, "Woe is me."

Answer 2

Grammatically, "this is she" is correct. I know that this is used in the Caribbean quite naturally, but it doesn't come quite so naturally to English speakers elsewhere. There is an easy way around this. If somebody says:"I'd like to speak to X please" and you happen to be X, you simply reply: "Speaking!"
We tend to say "this is me" using "me" as an emphatic pronoun, especially when going through photo collections. "This is I", while grammatical, strikes a rather forced note (except in the Caribbean).

Answer 3

I always say this is she. But, I like the idea of just saying "speaking" like some of the other answers suggest.

Answer 4

I always answer the phone by saying, " Minnie's Pool Hall. Who in the hall do you want." Of course, that's just me.

Answer 5

The best answer is forget about the pronoun go with the noun...what the hell its more direct anyway !


>>>"I would like to speak to Carol ?>>>>

"THIS IS CAROL" !

Now what could be simpler ! You see Carol being a proper name is nomininative as well as objective so there is no quiblling about nominative versus objective.

In the answer the implied meaning is:"____" is here on the phone.---nominative but at the same time,............the direct answer is in reply to who is this : This is"____" where the person is the object in the predicate not the subject.

Of course if its too conflicting you could always lie and say" This is George, Carol went to sh-it and the hogs ate her !"

Answer 6

You should say "This is she." If you rearrange the sentence you can understand it better.
She is speaking" instead of "Her is speaking". "This is me" and "this is I" are both awkward, and should be avoided.
If you want to avoid the question altogether, you can just say "Speaking". That sounds much better anyway.

Answer 7

Strictly grammitically it's 'this is she' but it sounds extremely stilted to be speaking in the 3rd person rather than the 1st - the queen may speak thus on formal occasions.

'This is I' would be correct in theory ('I' being the subject complement) but again it sounds dated.

A simple 'Speaking' overcomes these difficulties.

Answer 8

This is she speaking or just "speaking".

Answer 9

It's more like "Speaking"...this is me or her sounds awkward.

Answer 10

if you want to be correct according to the prescriptivists (and no card-carrying linguist would ever endorse this point of view), you would say 'this is she' (the link below shows how uncertain this is though.... you can see 'authorities' weighing in on both sides)...

i usually duck the issue by saying 'this is'