"It is me" vs. "It is I"? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate:
Which is correct to say: “It's me” or “It's I”?

Tonight I watched a movie (The Gospel of John) in which Jesus said (as quoted from the written Gospel of John), "It is I."

How does this expression differ from "It is me?"

Solution 1:

"It is me" is the more commonly spoken form, while "It is I" is commonly written, taught in school, and sometimes spoken especially in formal or archaic use.

Here is an excerpt of Mark Israel's summary of "It's me" vs "It's I" from the alt-usage-english fast-access FAQ:

The rule for what [Fowler] and others consider technically right is ... that "to be" should link two noun phrases of the same case, whether this be nominative or accusative. ...

Sometimes in English, though, "to be" does seem to have the force of a transitive verb. ... The occurrence of "It's me", etc., is no doubt partly due to this perceived transitive force. ...

The final factor is the traditional use of Latin grammatical concepts to teach English grammar.

For more information, see the (duplicate) question Which is correct to say: "It's me" or "It's I".

Note: Some other answers on this page imply that this question of whether to use "I" or "me" after "is" (pronoun case after copula), is the same as the question of whether to use "I" or "me" after "and" (pronoun case after conjunction). While these may be related, there is no reason to assume they are the same.

Solution 2:

Both expressions mean the same thing.

However, both of these pronouns have different rules of usages. In this case, they are both correct, because in some cases, like this case, they are interchangeable, but there are also instances when one of them can be used, but not the other:

"I" is a first person singular subject pronoun.

"Me" is a first person singular object pronoun.

Usually, there are interchangeable, as in the above example, but the bottom line is, don't use a subject pronoun and an object pronoun together. For example,

He and I = correct

but

He and me = wrong.

In the case of nouns, like "John and I" vs. "John and me", just substitute the appropriate pronoun for "John", and determine whether it is correct or not. For example:

John and I/He and I
John and me/He and me.

So, you would know that "John and me" is an incorrect usage in this case.

Edit: As @MT_Head very kindly pointed out, there are cases when the noun can be replaced by a subject pronoun, and in other cases, by an object pronoun. In each case, substitute the correct pronoun and determine whether or not it is correct.