Seriously, I was going to say something about that comment as well. Although “this is she” is the proper phrase, it is also a very uncommon one. I didn’t even notice she said that until it was mentioned in the thread. Saying “this is her” does not make one sound uneducated. If anything, saying “this is she” is more likely to make one sound rather pretentious.
Up until the final scene with Gabby and the nun on the front porch I was convinced she was the nanny from Growing Pains! Alas, the nun’s teeth looked much larger than those of the Growing Pains nanny. They did look very similiar, though.
Insisting on using formal, written grammar in casual conversation does, in fact, cause one to sound pretentious. I have, for example, lightened up considerably on always speaking in complete sentences, because people tell me it sounds snotty. I’ve not exactly turned to cockney rhyming slang, you understand, but I try not to sound like the pages of an academic treatise when I talk.
Then “people” are idiots. Having a subject and a verb together is “snotty”? That’s the dumbest damn thing I’ve ever heard. I assume whoever told you this was able to make themselves understood with the elaborate series of grunts and whistles they use in place of, you know, words?
I would never consider responding to a telephone request for “Mr. Mudd” with “This is he,” although it’s certainly correct. I don’t know if it’s pretentious, exactly, but it certainly sounds stilted in that context.
I would be rather more likely to reply with “Speaking,” which isn’t even a proper sentence fragment. It’s just appropriate for that mode of communication.
(This is coming from someone who is routinely mocked for a conversational style which is apparently “too precise.”)
I don’t think I could bring myself to say “This is him,” though.
(Do you think Desperate Housewives threads on other message boards tend to include this sort of tangent?)
