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Comment by rjknight | Hacker News Reader

It's not really valid, but it's not uncommon either. It's something that would sound unremarkable in speech but looks quite bad when written down.

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It's perfectly valid. "X and I" is only valid if the sentence makes sense if you only used "I".

This article makes one valid use of "me and X":

> in an effort to score extra points with me and Carl.

If you changed that to "Carl and I" then took out Carl it would be "to score extra points with I", which is disturbing and wrong.

Aha, you appear to be correct. This might be a case of linguistic prejudice then - the mistake of saying "me" when "I" is appropriate is considered to be a sign of miseducation, whereas few people ever make the mistake of saying "I" when they mean "me", so it has not acquired any negative connotations. This prejudice applies even when the usage of "me" is correct!

Notice that I said "as the subject of a sentence". It certainly works in the single case you chose. How about these:

"… and me and Carl were quietly trying to weigh up which team …" "Me and Carl had a winner and …" "During the excercise me and a colleague, Carl, made ourselves available …"

Yes, those are incorrect. Perhaps it's just because I'm not located in the UK, but it really stands out for me. Those, the lack of periods and phrases such as:

>and thinked the way most of the team already worked and thought

Hopefully, I've fixed the grammar.

Yes, that sentence in the first paragraph stood out to me too, but I really didn't expect for the article to gain traction.

I want to add that I can't suit everyone, there are things that annoy me about American English grammar that I can't change, and I wouldn't think about writing in the comments suggestions on how to fix it. Maybe that's just me.

Of course, and if these formulations are valid British grammar, then I don't expect you to change them. That's why I asked.

Shouldn't it be "Carl and me"? I thought there were two rules for these phrases: subject vs. predicate (as illustrated in the parent post) and that you should put yourself last.

That you put yourself last is a question of modesty, not grammar :)

Just did some research and it looks like you are right. I learned both rules as a kid at once and didn't realize the distinction.

I like to read what I write aloud as a sense check before submitting it - nothing stood out immediately. My wife often tells me my (written) English is terrible.

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