Call Sentence 9-1-1!

Leave the other person at home. That's my advice.

Not always, of course. It's fun to go out with a friend to the coffee shop or to a movie, or maybe go shopping together. I'm talking about a different case.

The objective case, actually. I can see the question mark above your heads. Take this sentence that I heard on this past weekend:

He did it for you and I.

Now's the time to leave the other person at home. What I mean by this is get the other person out of your sentence. So in the example above, we would take out "you" and what would we have left?

He did it for . . . I.

Ah-h-h-h-h!!!! We would never say that. We know better. We know that the correct way to say this is: He did it for me.

Okay, now that we have the correct form, let's invite the other person back into the sentence:

He did it for you and me. (The convention in English is that we mention ourselves last.)

That's all there is to it. You never have to make this mistake again!

I have my own theory about why this mistake is so prevalent. It appears regularly in news reports, love songs, and movie scripts. I hear it from the platform, from the pulpit, and from the podium.

It comes from a generation of mothers correcting the grammar of their children. That in itself is a good thing. It went something like this:

Johnny: "Mommy, can Billy and me go to the store?"

Mother: "It's 'Billy and I.'"

Johnny: "Okay, okay, can Billy and I go to the store?"

Mother: "That's better. Yes, you may."

So after millions of mothers reminding little Johnny and little Janey that it was "Billy and I," not "Billy and me," this set phrase crept into daily usage as the ONLY way of connecting these two people in a sentence.

The mothers were right. Check it out. Leave the other person at home:

"Mommy, can . . . I go to the store?"

But what about case of the first example: He did it for you and me.

It all hinges on case. The subjective case or the objective case. If it's the subject of the sentence (Can Billy and I go to the store?), then you need "I."

If it's the object of the verb or the object of a preposition (e.g., for), then you need the objective case, and that word is "me."

He did it for me.

Get it right . . . for you and me.