Me, myself and I

Everyone who cares about this sort of thing has a grammar “pet peeve.” My mom hates it when people say nauseous when they mean nauseated. My dad always (annoyingly) corrects me when I say less instead of fewer. Someone out there is probably writing an angry letter to the newspaper about a split infinitive.

My biggest grammar pet peeve is the misuse of the pronoun myself. Myself is a reflexive pronoun. The other English reflexive pronouns are yourself, himself, herself, itself, yourselves, ourselves and themselves. A reflexive pronoun is used as the object of a verb or preposition when the subject and object in a sentence refer to the same person, people or thing(s). Take the sentence:

Plaxico Burress shot himself in the thigh.

This is a correct usage of the reflexive pronoun, because Plaxico Burress is both the subject of the verb (the shooter) and the object (the shot).

I don’t hear a lot of mistakes with the other reflexive pronouns; it’s only myself that seems to cause confusion. Let’s go over some common errors.

WRONG: Tanja, Bianca and myself prepared this presentation.

This is an incorrect usage because a reflexive can never be used in subject position.

RIGHT: Tanja, Bianca and I prepared this presentation.

WRONG: Please return your completed form to Tanja, Bianca or myself.

WRONG: Tanja can ride with Heather, and Bianca with myself.

The reflexive is used incorrectly in these examples because a reflexive can only be used if the subject and object refer to the same thing. If they don’t, the objective pronoun me should be used.

RIGHT: Please return your completed form to Tanja, Bianca or me.

RIGHT: Tanja can ride with Heather, and Bianca with me.

A handy trick when you’re in doubt is to take the other people out of the sentence and see if it still makes sense. You would never say, “Myself prepared this presentation,” so it is incorrect to say “Tanja, Bianca and myself prepared this presentation.” Another is to try your sentence with a different grammatical person. You wouldn’t say “return the form to himself,” so you can’t say, “return the form to myself.”

The other correct way to use reflexive pronouns is for emphasis.

I swear I wrote that essay myself.

There is nothing to fear but fear itself.

In these examples, the reflexive adds emphasis. Taking it out changes the tone of the sentence but not its meaning.