On Facebook the other day, I read a status comment by a former classmate of mine where he was frustrated at the incorrect use of grammar on captions for photos. For example, he was tired of seeing stuff like "Me and Sally" or "Me and Sally at the beach," retorting that people need to get their grammar straight. Umm... yeah...

Grammatical rules state that "I" is a pronoun that is the subject of a verb, while "me" is a pronoun that is the object of a verb. I was taught in tenth grade that the easiest way to figure out which one to use is to remove the other people and make the sentence just about you. If it reads correctly, then you're good to go; otherwise, you're wrong.

For instance, "Me and John went to the store" is wrong because if you remove "John" it becomes "Me went to the store." "Come with John and I to the store," on the other hand, is wrong because it becomes "Come with I to the store." Instead it should read "Come with John and me to the store."

Facebook photos, however, are a completely different monster. First of all, to expect proper grammar when complete sentences aren't often used is a stretch, but let's come up with a few samples.

Take "Sally and Me" or "Sally and me at the beach." Notice that there is no verb involved. Without a verb we can't properly determine the grammar; however, we can look at the implied verb.

There are two possibilities: "[This is] Sally and me at the beach" or "Sally and me [are] at the beach." In order to figure out which one is being implied, we just have to look at the nature of the object. Presenting Facebook photos online is like showing somebody a photo album or handing them a picture. When you hand somebody a picture of you and a friend, the act of doing so infers that you are presenting them with the object to identify people or a scene. "This is Sally and me at the beach" seems to fit - or even something along the lines of "This is Sally and me when we were at the beach."

Facebook is a social network that contains "social objects" - objects meant to be shared with people. Sharing these objects through posting them is akin to sharing them in meatspace by handing out a photo. If somebody asks "Who is in this photo?" your response could be either "That's Sally and me" or "Sally and I are in that photo." If you handed the photo to them while preemptively identifying yourself and Sally, you would say "This is Sally and me at the beach." You would never say "This is Sally and I at the beach," because removing the other people would produce "This is I at the beach" - which is just crazy talk.

Even without a verb, it's pretty clear that most uses of "SOMEBODY and ME" in a caption for a picture are pretty spot on for identification reasons. Remove the other people and ask yourself how many times you've labeled a solo photo of yourself as "I" - it just doesn't happen.

Now... my often overuse of commas? That's a different story.