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If a grammatical "mistake" becomes common enough, common wisdom states that the mistake is no longer a mistake. The rules of grammar supposedly adapt to real-world usage. Real-world usage aside, the widespread use of "me and so-and-so" in our culture drives me nuts!

Once upon a time, we would say, "George and I went to the store." A couple decades ago, if someone said, "Me and George went to the store," the listener would quietly come to the conclusion that the speaker was a bit slow. Nowadays, turn on the television and the newscaster is saying, "Me and ... blah, blah, blah." Talk radio hosts say it. Even educated people such as lawyers and CPAs have embraced the "me and my client" culture.

I ran a little experiment while writing this article and found something even more frightening. I have intentionally included the "me and George" error and other flagrant grammatical mistakes in this article and ran it through Microsoft Word's spelling and grammar check. Guess what? Obvious errors -- and in particular, the "me and ..." error was not reported as a grammar error by the software!

Is this real-world grammar just the product of a narcissistic "Me, me, me society?" Are we just getting dumb? Or am I way behind the times and perceived as dumb because I am not using real-world usage?

Frankly, it's been many years since I suffered through a semester of grammar class. I can see or hear what's off with a sentence but do not know what the error is specifically called. So, here's the practical, common sense rule as I understand it from second grade:

Break up the sentence to see if you are using the correct pronoun. If you're saying "Me and George went to the store," keep George out of it and try this: "Me went to the store." Sounds ridiculous, eh? Conversely, split up the correct sentence and we have, "George went to the store," and "I went to the store." This is an easy, sure-fire way to figure out if your sentence makes grammatical sense.

Common sense aside, those of us who are offended by the constant "me and so-and-so" grammar can at least take comfort in the fact that pronoun variations such as "Me and him went to the store" or "Her and me went to the store" have not yet skyrocketed to the top of the common usage charts.

Now that I've ranted, me going to the store. Maybe George wants to go, too.

Urbain Beck is a freelance writer who has authored numerous online and off-line articles and technical reports. If you are a writer and have been published online and would like to show off your writing, be sure to submit some blurbs at The Blurbosphere. You'll receive one-way links from PR2, PR3 and PR4 blogs at no charge. Visit http://www.blurbosphere.com for details.