[Nick's Writing Blog] Between You and I, It's Ungrammatical
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Nick
Aug 13, 2010, 8:08:15 AM8/13/10
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Today I'm writing about an amazingly common mistake, even among writers.
Or perhaps I should say especially among writers, or scriptwriters anyway. While watching the UK soap Coronation Street the other day, I heard the character John Stape - a dedicated if deranged English teacher - use the term "between you and I" in conversation with his wife.
I found this hard to believe (admittedly, lots of things in Coronation Street are!). The character Stape is a stickler for correct grammar, so I can't believe he would really use an expression like this, even in casual conversation. It looks like a mistake by the writer to me, which wasn't picked up by the script editor.
There's a clear grammatical rule in these situations, which is that a pronoun following a preposition such as "between" must always be in the objective rather than the subjective case. That's me rather than I, him rather than he, and so on.
This mistake is often made by people who are actually trying too hard to be correct - it's therefore an example of hypercorrection. There's an easy test, though, which is to change the order of the pronouns around. "Between I and you" doesn't sound right, does it? So "between you and I" can't ever be correct either.
And if any Coronation Street scriptwriters happen to read this, for my viewing pleasure I hope they will get this right in future!
Photo: The Granada Studios, where Coronation Street is filmed, by Tasa_M on Flickr.
Or perhaps I should say especially among writers, or scriptwriters anyway. While watching the UK soap Coronation Street the other day, I heard the character John Stape - a dedicated if deranged English teacher - use the term "between you and I" in conversation with his wife.
I found this hard to believe (admittedly, lots of things in Coronation Street are!). The character Stape is a stickler for correct grammar, so I can't believe he would really use an expression like this, even in casual conversation. It looks like a mistake by the writer to me, which wasn't picked up by the script editor.
There's a clear grammatical rule in these situations, which is that a pronoun following a preposition such as "between" must always be in the objective rather than the subjective case. That's me rather than I, him rather than he, and so on.
This mistake is often made by people who are actually trying too hard to be correct - it's therefore an example of hypercorrection. There's an easy test, though, which is to change the order of the pronouns around. "Between I and you" doesn't sound right, does it? So "between you and I" can't ever be correct either.
And if any Coronation Street scriptwriters happen to read this, for my viewing pleasure I hope they will get this right in future!
Photo: The Granada Studios, where Coronation Street is filmed, by Tasa_M on Flickr.
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Posted By Nick to Nick's Writing Blog at 8/13/2010 12:57:00 PM
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