More than 50 percent of the nation were not able to get this grammar question correct and people can’t believe how simple the explanation is.
The results of the YouGov poll were released on Monday (17 June), surveying a total 6,097 UK adults on their grammar.
Here is what they asked:
Brits were tasked with taking on the ‘brain teaser’. (Getty Stock Images)
Which sentence do you think is grammatically correct?
- It really has made the world of difference to William and I
- It really has made the world of difference to William and me
As a journalist, let’s just pretend I chose the correct answer.
Well, five percent of people said they didn’t know and another four percent thought ‘neither are correct’.
And 13 percent believed ‘both are correct’.
All of those people were wrong.
Now, a whopping 56 percent chose the option ‘It really has made the world of difference to William and I’.
The results of the YouGov poll were released on Monday. (YouGov)
They were also wrong, as the correct answer, which 22 percent chose, was ‘It really has made the world of difference to William and me’.
If you are one of those people who got it wrong, don’t worry because there is a really simple way of looking at it.
As shown in a Reddit thread, the only question you have to ask yourself is: “If you take the other person out of the sentence, does it still make sense?”
One person wrote: “It’s people over-correcting their english. They’ve been corrected to say ‘<person> and I’ enough times but don’t really understand why. It’s only ‘I’ if followed by a verb.
“Remember if you’re not sure, take out the other person and see if it makes sense. ‘It means the world to I’.”
Meanwhile, a second person wrote: “Specifically ‘I’ is the subject of the verb, it performs the action.
The male vs female comparison. (YouGov)
“‘Me’ is the object of the verb, the action is done to it. For example: I hit him before he hit me.”
A third added: “All the years I’ve been at school, and a f**king Reddit post explains grammar better than any teacher, lol.”
“It’s subject vs object. Verbs can trigger it, but so can prepositions,” someone else said.
“To William and me, it has made a difference is correct even though it is before the verb because ‘william and me’ is the object of ‘to’.”
“69 percent of people got it wrong – the last two options are wrong too,” another smart a**e pointed out.
Featured Image Credit: Reddit/Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images
Topics:Â UK News