“Don’t you mean Dan and I?” is a correction often heard from the mouths of parents, teachers and others interested in propagating correct grammar and speech. It’s so ubiquitous, in fact, that it has crept into use where it’s not only unnecessary but also inaccurate. “Dan and me” (or interchangeably, “me and Dan”) is not always an error, and using “Dan and I’ across the board may make you sound well-informed but is not as proper as many consider it to be.
Subjects and objects and verbs, oh my!
The crux of the issue lies in a bit of linguistics. “I” is the subject form of the first person pronoun, used when the person in question is the subject of a sentence. The subject is the person or object who “does” the primary verb - i.e “I took Tom to the beach”. “I” is the subject of the main verb, “took”.
“Me” is the object form of the pronoun, used when the person in question is the object (or one of the objects) of a sentence. The object is the person or thing that is acted upon, or is indirectly affected by the action denoted by the primary verb. In the sentence “Tom took me to the beach”, Tom has become the subject and the first person pronoun has become the direct object: “me”.
While syntax can get much more complicated than what is explained above, that’s the basics of subject and object. It bears remarking that the subject most commonly comes at the start of the sentence, but not in every case.
A simple test
Unless you are trained in linguistics, the subject vs object debate is unlikely to be of much help when trying to decide on the spot between “Dan and I” and “me and Dan”. Instead, just take the second person out of the equation and ask yourself which of the pronouns you would use if it was standing alone.
“Dan and I took Tom to the beach” becomes, when submitted to the simple test, “I took Tom to the beach” - a perfectly correct sentence.
“Tom took me and Dan to the beach” may provoke zealots to swoop in with an ‘I think you mean Dan and I”. However, consider “Tom took Dan and I to the beach” with Dan removed - “Tom took I to the beach”. In this case, “me” is clearly the more accurate choice of pronoun.
“Tom took me and Dan to the beach”, subject to the test, is “Tom took me to the beach’ - a more intimate outing, and a perfectly acceptable sentence.
Dan, at one of our favourite beaches. I draw character inspiration from real people in my life.
Grammar snobs?
The thing about the “Dan and I” vs “Dan and me” dilemma is that in the end, it doesn't really matter whether people use the correct pronoun. If you say “He went to the beach with Dan and I”, the person you are talking to is highly likely to understand what - and who - you mean. Effectively communicating your meaning is the purpose of language, and no living language is entirely static. Things change, we no longer speak like people did one hundred years ago, prime ministers can be pregnant, the world continues to turn. I’m certainly not about to correct people when I know perfectly well what they are trying to convey.
My issue with this particular quirk of the language, then, is not with those who use it in a way that is wrong according to currently accepted grammar, but with those who point out that someone else is wrong when they are not. If you really must correct someone on their syntax (and here’s a life hack: unless they ask you to, you are just being annoying), at the very least ensure you have the right end of the stick first.