{"id":789,"date":"2014-04-07T05:00:21","date_gmt":"2014-04-06T19:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spreeder.com\/blog\/?p=789"},"modified":"2014-04-07T05:00:21","modified_gmt":"2014-04-06T19:00:21","slug":"me-myself-and-i-the-correct-uses-for-these-three-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spreeder.com\/blog\/2014\/04\/07\/me-myself-and-i-the-correct-uses-for-these-three-words\/","title":{"rendered":"Me, Myself, and I – The Correct Uses For These Three Words"},"content":{"rendered":"

When do you use \u201cI\u201d and when do you use \u201cmyself\u201d in a sentence?<\/a> Can you tell which of the following sentences using \u201cmyself\u201d are grammatically correct?<\/p>\n

I found myself unable to get the teacher\u2019s attention
\nThe teacher asked Ben and myself to collaborate on the project
\nI myself saw Kathy steal Mario\u2019s lunchbox.<\/p>\n

The second sentence is wrong. The best way to figure out whether a sentence calls for \u201cI\u201d, \u201cme\u201d or \u201cmyself\u201d is to see whether the sentence works with just the first-person subject case.<\/p>\n

“Mary and myself<\/strong> went to see The Lion King last Friday.”<\/p>\n

\u201cMyself<\/strong> went to see The Lion King last Friday.\u201d<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t sound right in that second sentence, does it?<\/p>\n

The correct sentence should read as follows: \u00a0“Mary and I went to see The Lion King last Friday.”<\/p>\n

\u201cJust between you and myself<\/strong>, do you think Peter deserved that award?\u201d<\/p>\n

Here the correct sentence should say,<\/p>\n

\u201cJust between you and me<\/strong>, do you think Peter deserved that award?\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cMe\u201d is an object pronoun, part of the phrase “between X and Y” and so not a subject. However, in the first example, the phrase “Mary and I” stands in for the single subject in the sentence. If you’re confused, you can test out whether you’re dealing with a subject by replacing the word with “me” instead. The sentence “Me went to see The Lion King last Friday” doesn’t make sense either, as you’ll quickly see.<\/p>\n

Myself is a reflexive pronoun<\/h2>\n

Let\u2019s see one more example,<\/p>\n

\u201cTired of waiting for Ben to do it, I did the laundry myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this sentence you cannot apply the tip above. This sentence in as example of the reflexive noun usage. \u00a0We use this when the action described in a sentence is directed back to you. This is so because myself is a reflexive pronoun; it reflects the action back to the subject (myself, yourself, himself).<\/p>\n

Myself for added emphasis<\/h2>\n

Let\u2019s see a third example, with the sentence \u201cI myself saw Kathy steal Mario\u2019s lunchbox.”<\/p>\n

The word “myself” is grammatically redundant here, but it does serve a purpose: it emphasizes that the act of robbery was happening in front of my own two eyes. You can omit it and still have a grammatically correct sentence, or you can include it for emphasis.<\/p>\n

To sum up, whenever you\u2019re in doubt, use the this trick of stripping the sentence off of all other subjects and just keep the first person subject. If it still makes sense, you\u2019ve got it right.<\/p>\n

The most common misuse of \u201cmyself\u201d and “me” is when there are other subjects in the sentence, as in the case of sentences like this:<\/p>\n

“John, Natalie, and myself went for a picnic.”<\/p>\n

You\u2019d never say \u201cMyself went for a picnic\u201d or “Me went for a picnic” – you’d naturally say “I went for a picnic.” Use the single-subject test, and you’ll have the singular right answer.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When do you use \u201cI\u201d and when do you use \u201cmyself\u201d in a sentence? Can you tell which of the following sentences using \u201cmyself\u201d are grammatically correct? I found myself unable to get the teacher\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spreeder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spreeder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spreeder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreeder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreeder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreeder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spreeder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreeder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreeder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}