Editing Between you and I (section)

{{Short description|Phrase}}
{{for|the Kita Alexander song|Between You & I}}
{{Use American English|date=December 2021}}
"'''Between you and I'''" is an English phrase that has drawn considerable interest from linguists, grammarians, and stylists. It is commonly used by style guides as a convenient label for a construction where the nominative/subjective form of pronouns is used for two pronouns joined by ''and'' in circumstances where the accusative/oblique case would be used for a single pronoun, typically following a preposition, but also as the object of a transitive verb.
One frequently cited use of the phrase occurs in Shakespeare's ''[[The Merchant of Venice]]'' (1596–98). 
According to many style guides, the [[William Shakespeare|Shakespearian]] character who used the phrase should have written "between you and me".
Use of this common construction has been described as "a grammatical error of ''unsurpassable'' grossness",{{efn
|The characterization as "a grammatical error of unsurpassable grossness" is attributed by [[Bryan Garner]] to an unnamed "one commentator".<ref name="Garner"/> [[Bill Bryson]] attributes it to  [[John Simon (critic)|John Simon]],<ref name="Bryson ">{{Cite book|at=between you and I|last1=Bryson |first1=Bill |authorlink1=Bill Bryson|title= Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words |date=2002 |publisher= Crown Publishing Group |isbn=9780767910477}}</ref> who apparently used the term in reference to Tennessee Williams's alleged use of "between ''he'' and I".<ref>{{Cite book |page=18 |title=Paradigms lost, reflections on literacy and its decline |last= Simon |first=John I. |isbn=9780517540343 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=5cNZAAAAMAAJ |date= 1980 |publisher=C. N. Potter, distributed by Crown Publishers}}</ref>}} although whether it is (or was) in fact an error is a matter of debate.