Clearing Up

Okay, before my Europe post, (which will be coming hopefully soon) I think I owe some explanation to some people. If you have known me pretty well recently, you will have realized that I have an annoying habit of correcting people whenever they say something like "Our team consisted of me, Tom, Dick, and Harry" to "Our team consisted of Tom, Dick, Harry and I".

Understand?

Well, I was just thinking about it just now, and I decided to Google the subject to confirm that I was doing the right thing. (I wasn't even sure that whole time I had the habit, Jia En's the one who taught me)

And well, here are the results of my search:

Consider the following sentence: You and I should have lunch.

Is the correct form of this sentence You and I ... or You and me ...? This is a common source of confusion in English.

Fortunately, there's an easy way to decide whether to use I or me in such sentences. All you have to do is drop the word you then try the sentence with I and me one at a time. For example:

• I should have lunch.
• Me should have lunch.

Clearly the preferred form in this case is I; thus, the original sentence was correct to use you and I.

Here's another example: He'll blame you and I. Drop the word you then try the sentence with Ime one at a time, like so: and

• He'll blame I.
• He'll blame me.

You can see that the second of these is correct. This means that the original sentence should have been: He'll blame you and me.

Easy.

On a related note, when using phrases such as you and me, you and I or them and us, it has traditionally been considered courteous to place the reference to yourself last. For example, we prefer:

• He'll ask you and me later.

over:

• He'll ask me and you later.

So there you have it. I would like to sincerely apologize for all the times I'd wrongly corrected your grammar. In that sense, I actually wronged your grammar. Not in all the cases, of course, but perhaps half of the time. Heheh.

In the future, I shall make an effort to consider your sentences before voicing my corrections.

Jun Shern out.

*Static*