Between You and Me

I want to tell you a secret. Can we keep it between you and I? Or between you and me? Which is correct? This post is all about "me," in that "me" is the right answer.

To explain why, we need to go back to Grammar 101 and the parts of speech. In the phrase above, "between" is a preposition. A preposition gives information about location, space, direction, and time. The noun or pronoun to the right (typically) of the preposition completes its meaning. It's called the object of the preposition and is always in the objective case. In English, case changes only in pronouns, not nouns. The following personal pronouns are in the objective case: me, you, her, him, it, us, and them. Since "between" is a preposition, its pronoun has to be in the objective case, so "me" rather than "I" is correct. Let's look at some other examples of prepositions and their objects.

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• Stay with me.
• Water dripped from the pipes above them.
• The tickets were for us.
• The bird flew toward her and me.
  

If you substitute the subjective case for the pronoun, often the sentence sounds wrong.

• Stay with I.
• Water dripped from the pipes above they.
• The tickets were for we.
  

Distinguishing between "I" and "me" is the tricky one because we've all been taught to politely put the other person first in a sentence (i.e., He and I went to the concert). Our instinct is to do the same with pronouns following prepositions, so "the bird flew toward her and I" sounds correct. To fight that tendency, try switching the order of pronouns in the sentence. Does "the bird flew toward I and her" still sound right?

If you remember that prepositions take pronouns in the objective case and to swap the pronoun order when in doubt over "I" and "me," you won't go wrong in your writing. And don't worry. You don't have to keep this information just between us.