“Between You and I” Is Wrong, and the Reason Is Instructive
Between you and I appears in Shakespeare, in business emails, and in the speech of people who are trying hardest to speak well. It is still wrong, and the reason it survives is more interesting than the error.
The rule it breaks
English pronouns change form depending on their job. I, he, she, we, they do things. Me, him, her, us, them have things done to them, and follow prepositions.
Between is a preposition. So it takes me: between you and me.
The test that never fails
Remove the other person and listen.
- Between I — obviously wrong. So: between you and me.
- He gave it to I — obviously wrong. So: he gave it to Sarah and me.
- Me went to the shop — obviously wrong. So: Sarah and I went to the shop.
Nobody gets these wrong with one person. The second name is what breaks the instinct, because it puts distance between the preposition and the pronoun and the ear stops tracking.
Why the wrong version sounds better
This is a hypercorrection: an error produced by over-applying a real rule.
Most English speakers were corrected as children for saying me and Sarah went to the park. The correction was right, but the lesson that got absorbed was cruder than the rule: saying “me” with another person is sloppy; “I” is the polite one.
Carried into adulthood, that instinct produces between you and I, he invited my wife and I, thanks for meeting with Tom and I. Every one of them is an attempt to be careful. That is why they cluster in formal writing and job interviews rather than in casual speech.
Hypercorrections always sound refined. It is what makes them so durable, and so hard to correct without sounding pedantic yourself.
The family of them
Once you can see the mechanism, the others are recognisable:
- I feel badly — over-applying “use adverbs after verbs” to a linking verb.
- Whom shall I say is calling? — over-applying whom. It should be who, because it is the subject of is calling.
- To whom it may concern, from John and myself — myself used to sound formal, where me is correct.
- Pronouncing the T in often — a spelling pronunciation adopted because the silent version felt careless.
The “myself” problem
Worth its own note, because it is spreading fast in business writing. Myself is a reflexive pronoun. It is correct only when the subject and object are the same person, or for emphasis:
- I hurt myself. Correct — same person twice.
- I built it myself. Correct — emphasis.
- Please contact John or myself. Wrong — should be me.
- Myself and Sarah attended. Wrong — should be Sarah and I.
The same instinct is at work: myself feels more formal than me, so it gets deployed wherever formality is wanted. It is not more formal. It is a different word for a different job.
The wider lesson
When you are unsure which form to use and one of them feels more correct, that feeling is not evidence. It is usually the residue of a half-remembered correction, and half-remembered corrections are exactly what produce hypercorrections.
Test instead. Drop the other person, simplify the sentence, and listen to what is left. The ear is reliable on short sentences and unreliable on long ones, which is the whole trick.
Checked against Merriam-Webster, the Chicago Manual of Style and the AP Stylebook. Spotted an error? Tell us — see our editorial policy.
