Pedantry

[taimatsu]

Aaaaaaaargh!

This rant has been brewing for a while. I can no longer put up with the gross misuse of thw word 'myself' without saying something.

Sarah and myself are going to the cinema tonight.
Myself and Sam got really drunk.
Could James please contact myself.
If you took a photo of me, please provide a copy to myself.

WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.

Corrections of the above (real, if slightly paraphrased) examples:

Sarah and I are going to the cinema tonight.
Sam and I got really drunk.
Could James please contact me?
If you took a photo of me, please provide me with a copy.

Correct uses of 'myself'.

I'm all by myself, alone in the house.
I looked at myself in the mirror.
He's on holiday in Canada. I went there myself last year.
I made myself a new skirt.

Here's a brief outline of the problem.

Comments

[ifimust.livejournal.com]

May I join you, with a rant about the difference between, "your" and "you're", and between alter and altar?? Theological students, take note....

[imc.livejournal.com]

Ah, but there's a whole page (http://euclid.colorado.edu/~rmg/its.html) devoted to the "your" issue.

If you'll forgive the following entirely random remark, you came up in a conversation I had with bekithewitch on Friday about the links between ukrc and urp, so how much of a coincidence is it that you've popped up in one of my friends' journals the very same weekend?…

[ifimust.livejournal.com]

There are whole pages devoted to all kinds of issues - but they seem to pass my students by, I fear....

I've not posted in ukrc for years. I got far too tired defending my right to be called a Christian - from other Christians. I made good friends there, though.

Not that I have the slightest idea who you are, to be honest. :)

[imc.livejournal.com]

No reason you should recognise me — I'm not a high profile poster (Google can find me, however). I've been to a few meets, though.

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

My current favorite pet peeve is "irregardless." Ahh, the English language...

[darcydodo]

Yay for grammatical pedantry. :)

Tangentially, this post reminds me of when my 6th grade class had to put together photographic autobiographies, and about five kids called theirs "Me, Myself, and I." I called mine "Me, Me, and Only Me," which I think was far more accurate and unquestionably unique. ;)

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

Preach, sister, preach!

[taimatsu]

That made me laugh :)

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Were you eavesdropping on my mother and I last week? ;-) We had a fairly long ranting conversation, complete with exceedingly similar examples, in the car on Thursday, trying to convince my dad that there are not that many opportunities to use 'myself' correctly and that 90% of the time if he wants to use it he's probably better off using 'I' or 'me'. My dad is, of course, not a native English speaker, and he's getting more erratic/forgetful as he gets older. He now talks about 'opening' switches (direct translation from Italian) and I think he's reverted to counting in Italian too. :/

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

(That is of course 'my mother and me', but I was going to write 'myself' and figured that would be pushing a joke just that little bit too far.)

[ifimust.livejournal.com]

Wry and fond grin - one of the last conversations I had with my father was in Italian - to which he reverted to pull a fast one on his nurses. They thought he'd completely lost it, till I gave them a list of words he was likely to try out on them. :)

(That has nothing to do with anything, but I'm feeling sentimental tonight and you sparked a memory. Thank you, and apologies to Taimatsu for misusing her journal).

[liv]

I love your pedantry posts!

[taimatsu]

I'm glad someone does :)

[mattp.livejournal.com]

That misuse winds me up immensely. It's scarily common in my workplace, depsite me pointing out the error.

[nannyo.livejournal.com]

Oh I hear you! Grammar is useful, it MEANS something... I get so twitchy about it. Apostrophes send me into fits.

Yay for grammar pedants, yay!
N.