"You and I" or "You and me"?
Summary
This article explains when to say "you and I" and when to say "you and me".
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 discard 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 as written. Here's another example: He'll blame you and I.
Discard the word "you" then try the sentence with "I" and "me" one at a time: so:
- 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.
See how easy that was!
On a related note, when using phrases such as "you and me", "you and I" or "them and us", it is 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.
