{"id":250,"date":"2008-06-01T12:00:13","date_gmt":"2008-06-01T18:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/blog\/2008\/06\/second-then-third-then-first\/"},"modified":"2008-06-01T12:26:19","modified_gmt":"2008-06-01T18:26:19","slug":"second-then-third-then-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2008\/06\/second-then-third-then-first\/","title":{"rendered":"Second, then Third, then First"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This post is about courtesy, not necessarily about grammar.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s look at a couple of rules of courtesy:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>It&#8217;s courteous to put the listener first.<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s courteous to put others ahead of you.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly common to hear both of these rules violated, especially by younger speakers of American English.<\/p>\n<p>Examples of sloppy speech:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Me and you can go to the store now.&#8221; is sloppy for two reasons: (a) it does not put the listener first; (b) it uses the wrong first-person pronoun (&#8220;me&#8221; instead of &#8220;I&#8221;).<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Jim, Mary, you and I should leave now.&#8221; is sloppy because it puts the listener second.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Send it to myself and Bob.&#8221; is sloppy for two reasons: (a) it puts the speaker ahead of the third person (&#8220;Bob&#8221;); (b) it uses the wrong first-person pronoun (&#8220;myself&#8221; instead of &#8220;me&#8221;).<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;I and they want the green paint.&#8221; is sloppy because it puts speaker before the third party (&#8220;they&#8221;).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Here is how the above rules of courtesy get translated into grammatical terms:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If you are including your listener in your statement, put him or her &#8212; &#8220;second person&#8221; &#8212; first.<\/li>\n<li>Then, if you are including others in your statement, put him, her or them &#8212; &#8220;third person&#8221; &#8212; second.<\/li>\n<li>Finally, if you are including yourself in your statement, put yourself &#8212; &#8220;first person&#8221; &#8212; third.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Following these rules, we get these corrected examples:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;You and I can go to the store now.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;You, Jim, Mary and I should leave now.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Send it to Bob and me.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;They and I want the green paint.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Summarizing the rules in grammatical terms, we get this order in which to put the people within a list in a statement:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Second person<\/li>\n<li>Third person<\/li>\n<li>First person<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This post is about courtesy, not necessarily about grammar. Let&#8217;s look at a couple of rules of courtesy: It&#8217;s courteous to put the listener first. It&#8217;s courteous to put others ahead of you. Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly common to hear both of these rules violated, especially by younger speakers of American English. Examples of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-common-english-blunders"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Second, then Third, then First - Kirk Mahoney . com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2008\/06\/second-then-third-then-first\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Second, then Third, then First - Kirk Mahoney . com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This post is about courtesy, not necessarily about grammar. 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