Grammar: how to know when to use me or I

Two songs I heard on the radio brought into focus the confusion about the use of the subjective pronoun "I" and the objective pronoun "me".

The first was the Phil Collins version of A Groovy Kind Of Love, which contains the grammatically incorrect refrain:

Wouldn't you agree,

Baby you and me

Got a groovy kind of love?

By using the object "me" instead of the subject "I", the song maintains its rhyme scheme, which would have to be forfeited if replaced by the grammatically-correct "Wouldn't you agree/Baby you and I/Got a groovy kind of love?"

The reverse error - the so-called Toff's Error - was committed on the next song I heard on the radio: Hungry Eyes by Eric Carmen, from the film Dirty Dancing.

The Toff's Error (aka hypercorrection) is the use of the subject "I" when the object "me" is correct:

Hungry eyes,

I feel the magic between you and I.

The refrain should, of course, be "I feel the magic between you and me."

We can be charitable to both songs and presume their overriding artistic intentions were to preserve their rhyme schemes. Or maybe the writers of the songs just made grammatical mistakes.

And of course, song writers are at liberty to use and misuse the language for the sake of art. But children who intend to sit the 11 plus exam need to know when to use "I" and "me", as a child's "SPAG" (spelling and grammar) knowledge can and shall be tested.

A tip for knowing when to write "me"

The simple way of remembering when to use "me" is that it (like other object pronouns) relates to a preposition. So, when you see sentences with prepositions, such as these...

Among John, Santosh and ____ there is a growing friendship.

The ball belongs to my sister and ____

The branch is too high above ___

Let's keep it a secret between you and ____

...the prepositions in these sentences mean that we use the objective pronoun "me".

A tip for knowing when to write "I"

The most common error that people make is in saying things such as "Me and David are going to the park to play football."

If your child needs correcting on this issue, ask them to remove the "and David" part of the sentence: "Me is going to the park to play football." Here it becomes apparent that the sentence is grammatically incorrect and should be "David and I are going to the park to play football."

How to get help for your child's grammar

If you are planning for your child to sit an 11 plus exam in either Bexley or Kent and grammar is not their strongest suit, they will benefit from the 11 Plus Prep School's one-to-one English course as well as our more general 11 plus tutoring. Enrol your child on an 11 Plus Prep School course today in time for the 2021/2022 academic year.