“She sent the gift to my brother and I.”
Drop ‘my brother and.’ You’d say ‘to me,’ not ‘to I.’
Usage Entry 12 / 1605 60-second read Everyday
Me vs. I
When you’re the subject versus when you’re the object.
The comparisoni
“She sent the gift to my brother and me.”
‘Me’ is the object of ‘to.’ Politeness doesn’t change the grammar.
More examplesii
01
My wife and me were invited to the gala.
My wife and I were invited to the gala.
Subject position: WE were invited → my wife and I were invited.
02
The invitation was sent to my wife and I.
The invitation was sent to my wife and me.
Object of ‘to’: sent to US → sent to my wife and me.
The ruleiii
¶
Test it alone.
Remove the other person and read the sentence again. If ‘I’ sounds wrong, it is wrong.
Notesiv
Register
The ‘and I’ hypercorrection (‘between you and I,’ ‘for my wife and I’) is extremely common in speech. Getting it right is one of the quiet markers of careful writing.
Watch for
‘Between you and me’ — always. ‘Between you and I’ feels refined but is wrong.
Memory aidv
Remember it like this
Between you and me — always. Never ‘between you and I.’
A bit of historyvi
Old English had a four-form pronoun system; modern English kept the I-me split for first-person singular. The hypercorrection between you and I appears in printed English from at least the 16th century — Shakespeare puts it in the mouth of one of his characters in The Merchant of Venice. The persistent modern complaint about it dates to 18th-century usage manuals onward, and every major style guide today corrects it.
In the wildvii
Real-world-style usage — how this looks in a sentence people would actually write.
- Between you and me, the proposal has problems — and my co-author and I already told the committee.
- The photographer took a picture of my brother and me at the wedding; my brother and I were both unprepared.
Spottedviii
Specimens from the editorial inbox — lines that did, in fact, get published.
“For my wife and I, this has been an extraordinary year.”
— A politician’s concession speech, 2020 — the classic ‘and I’ hypercorrection
“Thank you for reaching out to Alex and myself.”
— A corporate autoreply, 2022 — ‘myself’ is the cousin trap of the same reflex
Test yourselfix
Which is right?
Quick duel 4 questions · ~30 seconds
Which is right?