It's All About Me (and Maybe George)

Grammar rules are not static. Common wisdom states that they change. Grammar rules are not set in stone because they change to conform with real-world usage. Real-world usage aside, the widespread use of "me and so-and-so" in our culture is not my cup of tea!

Once upon a time, we would say, "George and I went to the store." A couple decades ago, if someone said, "Me and George went to the store," the listener would conclude that the speaker was uneducated. Nowadays, turn on the television and the newscaster is saying, "Me and … blah, blah, blah." Talk radio hosts say it. Heck, I've observed people with post-graduate degrees embracing the "me and so-and-so real-world grammar."

I ran a little experiment while writing this article and found something even more frightening. I have intentionally included the "me and George" error and other flagrant grammatical mistakes in this article and ran it through Microsoft Word's spelling and grammar check. Guess what? The constant "me and …" usage did not even show up as a grammar error!

Is this poor grammar just the product of a narcissistic "Me, me, me society?" Have we become sloppy? Or am I way behind the times and getting dumb as a result because I am not using real-world usage?

Frankly, it's been many years since I suffered through a semester of grammar class. I can see or hear what's off with a sentence but do not know what the error is specifically called. So, instead of finding the right words and rules to explain it, here's the common sense rule that I learned back in second grade:

Take out the third person and see if the sentence makes sense. If you're saying "Me and George went to the store," keep George out of it and try this: "Me went to the store." Sounds ridiculous, eh? Conversely, split up the correct sentence and we have, "George went to the store," and "I went to the store." You can do this with a variety of sentences to easily figure out what makes the most grammatical sense.

Common sense aside, those of us who are offended by the constant "me and so-and-so" grammar can at least take comfort in the fact that pronoun variations such as "Me and him went to the store" or "Her and me went to the store" have not yet skyrocketed to the top of the common usage charts.

Now that I've ranted, me going to the store. Maybe George wants to go, too.

Urbain Beck is a freelance writer who has authored numerous online and off-line articles and technical reports. If you are a writer and have been published online and would like to show off your writing, be sure to submit some blurbs at The Blurbosphere. You'll receive one-way links from PR2, PR3 and PR4 blogs at no charge. Visit http://www.blurbosphere.com for details.

- Urbain Beck