Brigid Daull Brockway is technically a writer

Brigid Daull Brockway is technically a writer

A blog about words, wordplay, and etymology, with slightly more than occasional political rants.

Friday, January 16, 2015

Keep this between us

I recently ran across not one, but two stories about the expression between you and me. Turns out, some people say between you and I, and this is more wrong than the love child of Jar Jar Binks and Elmo. 
According to Grammar Girl, pronouns that come after prepositions in prepositional phrases are objects, not subjects, and as anyone who had my fifth grade English teacher knows, me is an object pronoun. 
BUT, Slate's Lexicon Valley podcast points out that this isn't necessarily true, because of something having to do with Noam Chomsky and Middle English. It was a pretty boring story, but I came up with a cool tip for remembering which is correct.
Don't say between you and I. It's wrong. But don't say between you and me either. Instead use the grammatically unambiguous "tell anyone and I will cut you."

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