Note 165 – ‘between you and me’ v ‘between you and I’

It’s a common mistake to write ‘between you and I’; however the correct way of writing this is ‘between you and me’.  If we break the phrase down, the word ‘between’ is a preposition and the words ‘you’ and ‘I’ are personal pronouns.  When personal pronouns follow prepositions, they should be in the object form and not the subject form. 

I have read the explanations on a few websites, but the one that explains this point best is the e learn english language website.  Here are a few of my own examples:

1. ‘Between you and me, we can’t sing’ (correct)
2. ‘Between you and I, we can’t sing’ (incorrect)

Why people sometimes choose point 2 above

The rules are different for sentences like the ones below, where the personal pronouns do not follow prepositions. You may have learnt that if you take away ‘you and’ from both sentences below, you can work out which sentence is the correct one e.g. ‘I can sing’ and ‘me can sing’.  Which one sounds better?

• ‘You and I can sing‘ (correct)
• ‘You and me can sing‘ (incorrect)

If you stuggle with this or if you have any questions please leave me a comment.

This blog post forms part of my writing challenge. Don’t forget that you can subscribe to receive my daily blogs by email so that you don’t miss any. Just click ‘sign me up’ on the home page. Alternatively you can follow my blogs on Twitter or my ‘Tips and Luxuries‘ Facebook page. Requests for future blogs (punctuation/grammar/writing tips) are always welcome.

Until tomorrow…

Sandra
Freelance writer
Please visit www.sandramadeira.com for more information on my services as a freelance writer.

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Reference list:

E Learn English Language – http://www.elearnenglishlanguage.com/difficulties/betweenyouandme.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+eLearnEnglishLanguage+(e+Learn+English+Language)

Related articles

• Note 125 – Prepositions v conjunctions (mywritingnotebook.wordpress.com)