Jane and you or you and Jane?
Which is the correct usage of a proper noun and you? It was a pleasure meeting Jane and you. It was a pleasure meeting you and Jane.
Thanks!!
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"It was a pleasure meeting you and Jane". You could also say, "It was a pleasure meeting (you two/you guys/or even just you)."
I would probably say "It was a pleasure meeting you guys." but that is casualy so "you and Jane would a be a good choice.
and if you say "you guys", guys doesn't mean just men, it can include women.
Steve1 Jun-17-2005
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I am not aware of any prescriptive rule which tells us whether to say "Jane" or "you" first. I agree with Steve, in that it sounds a bit more natural to me to have "you" first, perhaps as a way of expressing politeness to the closest addressee. But I don't think there is any rule or advice that would be against saying "Jane" first in the sentence.
I also agree with Steve that "you guys" is very widely used these days, both for males, females, and mixed groups of females and males. It would be perfectly acceptable to use as a substitute for "you and Jane," is both speaker and hearer understand who "you guys" refers to.
Both females and males use "you guys" to refer to all possible combinations of males and females.
wayneleman Jun-17-2005
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I agree with wayne and i also noticed that i made a typo. i wrote casualy and i meant casual i dont know where the y came from. yeah i don't think there is a rule about that, i agree with wayne again that is probably just more polite to put the addressee first.
Steve1 Jun-19-2005
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It is customary to first refer to the person you are addressing. The only site I initially found responding to your question was http://www.udel.edu/eli/questions/g07.html ---go about half-way down on the page, where the reply explains that both orders are correct.
Here are a few more similar examples that I'll toss out there:
You and Jane were a pleasure to meet.
**note that if I were to switch the order in this case, I'd insert "both"
Jane and you were both a pleasure to meet.
Are you and she still friends?
Jane and you seem to be great friends.
Sarah5 Jun-19-2005
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This question is an interesting twist to the usual question, where to insert yourself in a list of names, and the corollary whether to call yourself "me" or "I". I subscribe to the idea that it is best to put yourself last (I don't have a strong feeling about me or I). "Can you give that to Joe, Susan and me?"
Referring to someone else, tho, as in the Jane examples, I agree with others who say put the addressee first. It flows better, and has the emotional effect of placing those two people in a group: you and your mother, you and your wife, etc. While this ordering doesn't seem to make the addressee more important than the other person, I think the opposite case would oddly confer some sort of primacy on the other person. So saying "It was a pleasure to meet your mother and you" although in a sense showing respect for elders, makes an odd case for your mother and you being somehow separate entities, not in the group as I said above, and that your mother was somehow more important than you.
John4 Jun-20-2005
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Sarah,
"Jane and you were both a pleasure to meet." seems redundant.
How could the phrase mean anything else if the word "both" were omitted?
Using "both" here seems as if another idea is following, like: "Jane and you were both a pleasure to meet and to get to know".
RGB1 Jul-14-2005
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I look forward to meeting with you and Tom tomorrow.
Sandia Aug-31-2020
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