Me, Myself, and I

Thanks to all of you who sent me comments about my first post in this space.  It is clear that we are assaulted by enough grammar gaffes to keep us fighting the battle against them for a long time to come.

Some errors we love to hate are:

“Me and her both like the same guy.”

 “…between you and I…”

 “To sign up, please talk to Bob or myself.”

Me, myself, and I…  Each of these first person pronouns deserves a good look.  Just for fun, I’d like to focus first on the slyest one: “myself.”  Sly, because some people think it sounds right, and somehow better than “I” or “me.”

Here are some excruciatingly wrong uses of the reflexive pronoun.

  I have already cited Al Roker’s barbaric boo-boo:

   “Yeah, it’s annoying—Just like myself.”

Commented another Weather Channel expert,

  “That would give meteorologists grey hair—including myself.”

A news anchor on CNBC announced that Alan Greenspan had had

“an exclusive interview yesterday with myself…”

(Now that would be tricky!)

What has happened to little “me”?  It seems that some people have the mistaken notion that using “myself” sounds more sophisticated or scholarly.  Possibly, avoiding the use of “me” deflects the focus away from a self-conscious speaker. But it’s wrong. For the sentences above, “including me,” “like me,” “by sending me,” and “with me” are correct and sound perfectly right. 

           

Here’s one more ear-punisher from a scripted drama:

“You are genetically predisposed to compete against other women for the attention of strong men like myself.” 

Using “myself” this way not only sounds silly, it is grammatically wrong. All of these speakers and writers surely learned in school that “myself” is a reflexive pronoun. Its purpose is to refer to the subject of the phrase, as in “I did it myself” or “I feel sorry for myself.” Sometimes the subject needs to be put into the spotlight—“I myself don’t like these macaroons.”  The word “myself” could be omitted and the sentence would still make sense. The added reflexive pronoun highlights the fact that the speaker doesn’t like the cookies.  (“I myself don’t like these macaroons, because I hate coconut.  But my wife loves them.”)  Notice that “myself” is not replacing “I” or “me.”

Let’s discourage the use of the word “myself” where it doesn’t belong.  The English language is complicated enough as it is.