My dear readers, I have a revelation for you. “You and I” (or “my classmate and I” or “the neighbors and I” or “Mickey Mouse and I” — you get the idea) is NOT always grammatically correct, despite what you think you remember your teachers drilling into you in school.
Shocking, I know.
We’ve all heard this correction so many times that many of us believe we’re supposed to use “<so-and-so> and I” everywhere, 100% of the time. But it’s simply not true. This construction is only correct when you and your friend(s) are the subject of the sentence (the ones performing the action), not the object (the recipients of the action).
A ridiculously easy rule of thumb is that wherever you would use “me” alone in a sentence, “<so-and-so> and me” is actually the correct grammar.
Example #1:
“My coworkers and I boycotted the meeting.” This is correct, because “My coworkers and I” are the subjects of the sentence. We are the ones who (hypothetically) boycotted the meeting. If it were just me, the sentence would read “I boycotted the meeting,” not “Me boycotted the meeting.”
“My coworkers and me (or worse, me and my coworkers) boycotted the meeting” is exactly the kind of cringe-worthy error your grammar teachers always warned you about, and rightfully so.
HOWEVER…
Example #2:
“Our friends are taking my sister and I out to dinner.” This is NOT correct, because here we are the objects of the sentence, not the subjects. We are the recipients of the dinner, not the generous givers of it.
Let’s apply our handy rule of thumb. In this case if it were just me, wouldn’t it sound ridiculous to say “My friends are taking I out to dinner”? Of course it would. I should say “My friends are taking me out to dinner.” Add my sister into the mix, and it becomes “Our friends are taking my sister and me out to dinner.”
(I happen to have two sisters, so I’ll let them duke it out over which one got left out of the dinner invitation. But that’s beside the point.)
Here are a few more examples to help you out:
- My husband and I love the dog.
- The dog loves my husband and me. (But he loves me just a little better.)
- Billy Joel and I played the piano together. (In my dreams!)
- The piano was played by Billy Joel and me. (This one is slightly more complicated due to the passive voice. That’s a topic for another blog post, but I promise, this is correct.)
- My friend and I took photos of the gorgeous scenery.
- A passerby offered to take photos of my friend and me with the gorgeous scenery in the background. (What a kind stranger!)
Travesty or poetic license?
And then, just to go ahead and muck it all up, there are things like this floating around out there in pop culture-land:
Confess! I know you’re heretically singing this in your head right this very minute. But I mean, really, who among us would dare to quibble with Lady Gaga and her Bad Romance? So we’ll just chalk this one up to poetic license and let it slide.
However you, my friends, you are not Lady Gaga. You cannot get away with such blasphemy in your own writing. Please don’t try, or I and my merry band of grammar nazis will call you out on it. We surely will.
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