Prose Parade
Grammar and writing basics

My nephew facebooked (from the verb to facebook; don’t you just love it when someone verbizes a noun?) me this morning and asked the age-old question: Is it between he and I or between him and me? The short answer is him and me.

He, him, I and me are pronouns and differ from what we’re used to in English because they have cases just as the Romance (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Latin) languages do. On top of that they’re irregular. Also, they’re left over from an older form of English. No wonder it’s confusing.

In the example the pronouns are objects of the preposition between and so are in the objective case, i.e., him and me. The nominative case (for nouns that are the subject of the sentence, for instance) is I and he. So, I never want to hear any of you say, “Me and him were going to the movies.” Or, you’ll hear me say like Mandy Patinkin in The Princess Bride, “Prepare to die.” And, I’ll roll the “r” just as long and as broadly as he did.

As a quick check when you’re writing the sentence or even speaking slowly enough to catch yourself, take out the other person. So, would you say, “between I”? No, you would not; you’d think it was funky, and it is. Would you say, “Me is going to the movies”? You would not. Then, don’t.

For more in-depth information see The Parts of Speech page.