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I was trying to decide between the following two phrasings:

  • "People like Bob and me are built differently."
  • "People like Bob and I are built differently."

Both sound fine to me and I was trying to figure out what the underlying structure was. I tried breaking it down in a few ways and evaluating whether it "felt" wrong:

  1. "I am built differently."
  2. "Me am built differently." (definitely wrong)
  3. "Bob and I are built differently."
  4. "Bob and me are built differently."
  5. "People like I are built differently." (sounds wrong)
  6. "People like me are built differently."
  7. "Don't listen to people like Bob and I." (sounds slightly weird)
  8. "Don't listen to people like Bob and me."

Do others' gut reactions match up with mine? I was also hoping someone might have a more compelling analysis.

(I'm not too concerned about following a particular set of prescriptive rules. But it is sometimes still interesting to see what those rules might say about a particular sentence.)

Kannan Goundan
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    The simplest rule for deciding between "me" and "I" in "X and me" type constructions is to see how it "sounds" with "X and" removed. – Hot Licks May 10 '17 at 23:00
  • @sumelic No it ain't. This question is basically about case in coordinations of pronouns. There ain't no coordinations in that there other post. – Araucaria - Him May 11 '17 at 09:24
  • @HotLicks: Yeah, that makes sense. I think I confused myself by trying to remove the "People like" part, but that is maybe be too high up in the syntax tree? – Kannan Goundan May 11 '17 at 20:09

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