Referring to oneself and another person at the start of a sentence

  1. Me and Larry had a meeting today.
  2. Larry and me had a meeting today.
  3. I and Larry had a meeting today.
  4. Larry and I had a meeting today.

I know the third one is wrong (because it doesn't sound right). Which of the rest have the correct grammar?

Usage: writing a mail to a third person telling him this.


Solution 1:

The traditionally correct sentence is "Larry and I had a meeting today". To know whether to use the nominative case ("I") or accusative ("me"), remove "Larry": you'd say "I had a meeting", not "Me had a meeting".

These days, especially in informal usage, "Larry and me had a meeting today" is also common.

(There's also another traditional English rule—or just politeness—of naming the first person last, so you name Larry before naming yourself.)

Solution 2:

Actually, both the third and fourth are technically correct (because "I" is in the subjective case, which is correct for the sentence's subject), but it is generally considered polite to list one's self last.

The first two are incorrect because "me" is in the objective case; therefore it can be used as an object (as in "Larry met me today"), but not as a subject.