You and me? Or, you and I?

I go even crazier when I hear a colleague say: “Fred and me will take care of it.” Or, worse, “Give it to Fred and I, and we’ll take care of it.”

All those sentences (the ones contained by quotation marks) are incorrect.

You can be forgiven for not understanding why. Grammar is seldom taught in schools these days, and most of us struggle to speak correctly—just as we struggle to parent our teenagers without looking like fools.

So, let me help you prevent embarrassment when you’re speaking to a boss or an important client. Here is a quick explanation of the rules regarding I and me.

First, here’s my rule, which works most of the time: Remove the other person from the sentence, and then try both I and me to see which sounds better. For example, would you say, “Me is going to the store”? Of course not! That sentence requires I. Similarly, you’d never say, “Me will take care of it.” That’s another case where you need an I.