I’m not stupid, but: what’s with “and I”?

Did you ever have an exchange like this with your parents when you were growing up? Me: “Me and Mark had a great idea.” Parent: “You mean, Mark and I had a great idea.” This “and I” meme is stuck in the heads of many of our generation, and all over the place I see people applying it as though it’s a hard and fast rule. It’s not. First, let’s deal with the order. Why is it “Mark and I” and not “I and Mark”? There’s no grammatical reason for this order at all, except that it sounds better to put the nouns before the pronouns. But here’s the awkward bit. Sometimes it’s “Mark and I” and sometimes it’s “Mark and me”. In fact, the grammatical...

Posted by on Jul 15, 2011 in I'm not stupid but | 3 comments