Today, we’re going to talk about the pronouns I and me and the phrase between you and me. In their song “You and I,” One Direction gets the first part right and the second part wrong just a few lines apart.

Here’s the early line (at 0:57 in the video):

You and I, we don’t want to be like them.

It may sound a little grammatically weird because with the You and I followed by a pause and then we, they’re doing a double-subject thing I talked about in a previous show, but that’s OK, and they get the “you and I” part right, which is what we’re talking about today.

You, I, and Me are Pronouns

First the basics: The words you, I, and me are all pronouns. They stand in for nouns such as Zayn, Liam, and Harry.

Pronouns can be subjects or objects (or possessive, but we won’t talk about that today because it’s not relevant here).

Here’s a simple way to think about it:

• The subject of a sentence is doing something. (It is the agent taking action.)
• The object is the thing or person being acted on.

If I say, “I love Louis,” I am the subject (the one doing the loving). If I say “Louis loves you,” you are the object (the target of Louis’ love and the object of his affection).

[This article about active voice has a more advanced discussion of subjects and objects.]

Subject and Object Pronouns

To figure out the “between you and me” part, you need to know that I is a subject pronoun, and me is an object pronoun.

The proper sentence is I love Niall, not Me love Niall. You use I because the pronoun is the subject of the sentence, and I is the subject pronoun. If you’ve been speaking English your whole life, your ears quickly pick up the difference between right and wrong: I play the guitar not Me play the guitar.

The reason it gets tricky when you combine I and me with you is that you is both a subject and object pronoun. In other words, you use the word you whether it is in the subject position or the object position. You love Zayn and Zayn loves you. They are both correct.

You and I  Versus You and Me

When One Direction sings You and I don’t want to be like them, the pronouns you and I are both in the subject position. When the pronouns you and I are together, it’s called a compound subject, but you can also see that they’re both subjects by breaking it apart into I don’t want to be like them, and You don’t want to be like them.

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Between You and Me

Now that you get the subject-pronoun part, we can think about object pronouns, move on to between you and I, and see why it’s wrong.

Between is a preposition, just as on, above, over, and of are prepositions. Prepositions do things such as describe relationships or positions in time or space, and they do that by working with other words. For example, you could say the pillow is on the sofa, or the platter is above the refrigerator, or that Liam will stand between Harry and Zayn.

Instead of acting alone, prepositions are part of prepositional phrases. In those example sentences, on the sofa, above the refrigerator, and between Harry and Zayn are prepositional phrases. And it’s just a rule that pronouns following prepositions in such phrases are always in the object case. Me is the object pronoun, so if you want to say that Liam will stand between you and me, you use me because it’s the object pronoun. The correct prepositional phrase is always between you and me.

That’s why it’s so sad when (at 1:07 in the video) One Direction sings

Nothing can come between you and I*

Despite their good start with You and I, we don’t want to be like them, they messed up when they got to the preposition between. The line should be

Nothing can come between you and me.

Most people who study language and how it’s used are sympathetic to people who say between you and I because it’s often considered a hypercorrection. The theory is that people have been so traumatized by being corrected when they say things such as Harry and me went to the mall instead of Harry and I went to the mall that they incorrectly correct between you and me to between you and I.

[Hypercorrection isn’t the only theory about why people say between you and I instead of between you and me. For example, Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage tells of a theory that between you and I is related to people being told to say It’s I instead of It’s me and a theory that I sounds “softer, less emphatic, and less egotistical than me.” There’s also a French connection, which you can read about in this article from linguist Gretchen McCulloch: Why People Mix Up the Pronouns I and Me.)

I’ll keep my fingers crossed that One Direction’s next big hit is called “Between You and Me.”

References

Brians, P. “I/You/Me.” Common Errors in English. wsu.edu/~brians/errors/myself.html (accessed November 26, 2014).

Garner, B. A. Garner’s Modern American Usage, third edition. Oxford University Press. 2009. p. 102.

Gilman, E.W. (ed). Merriam Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage. Merriam-Webster, Incorporated: Springfield, MA. 1994. p. 181.

Strumpf, M. and Douglas, A. The Grammar Bible. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004.  p. 208.

Image: Jaguar PS / Shutterstock.com