The ‘ Me or I? ’ is something so many people have trouble with, is it mum and me, or mum and I? I get asked this all the time and it’s a really simple rule. I’ll try and clarify it here for those who have trouble getting the right one.
First up, the other person always goes first so it’s never ‘me and mum’. It’s polite when you have a guest to let them go first and so it’s always ‘mum and me’. Or at least this is the easy way I learned this rule.
That’s the first part of the rule sorted, but it’s the second part that people seem to have the most trouble with. Is the correct term here ‘I’ or ‘we’?
The answer to that question can be easily answered by taking the other person out of the equation. Here are some examples for you that show the rule perfectly.
I went shopping on Saturday.
Would become…
Mum and I went shopping on Saturday.
OR
The bus wouldn’t stop for me.
Would become…
The bus wouldn’t stop for mum and me.
Hopefully if you have trouble with the rule as to whether it should be ‘I’ or ‘me’ with all the subjectives and objectives then this should make it easier, allowing you to work it out by the context. It really is that simple. If you’re ever in doubt about whether you should use ‘me’ or ‘I’ just take the other person out of the equation and it becomes easy to see which one is correct.
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Me is an “object” pronoun and I is a “subject” pronoun – so if your sentence refers to a first-person subject, then u use I, otherwise it’s me