Me, Myself and I

Me, Myself and I (to quote a song title by the wonderfully talented Joan Armatrading – and many others too, according to my search engine of choice…)

 When do I use ‘I’, when do I use ‘me’ and when do I use ‘myself’ if I wish to be correct?

‘I’ is a pronoun referring to the speaker or writer.  If you really want to know, it’s a subjective pronoun.
‘Me’ is also a pronoun referring to the speaker or writer.  In this case it’s an objective pronoun.
‘Myself’ is also – you guessed it – a pronoun, but it is the ‘reflexive’ or ‘intensive’ form of ‘I’ or ‘Me’!

Great – that’s sorted then.  Clear as mud…  Okay, now let’s get down to brass tacks.

If you are telling someone about what you have done you say, for example:

• ‘I have been to the doctor today because I have a sore throat.’

  You can see that ‘I’ is the subject of the sentence.  Then you could say:

• ‘The prescription they gave me tastes disgusting.’

In this case ‘prescription’ is the subject and ‘me’ the object.  And then:

• ‘If I was by myself I’d throw it away, but you are here and you won't let me.”

You can, if you think about it, see that ‘myself’ is almost a ‘reflection’ of what ‘I’ was doing – hence reflexive.  And:

• When you say ‘I, myself, think it’s a waste of time producing something so revolting.’

That’s really laying down the law and being ‘intense’ about it.

There is confusion about when we should say ‘I’ and ‘me’ but if you take away the other people in the sentence(s) it becomes really easy to see where the errors lie.  For example:

• “I went to see the doctor.”  This means more or less the same thing as:
• “Lucy came with me to see the doctor.”

But we wouldn’t say:

• ‘Me went to the doctor’, and we certainly wouldn’t say
• ‘Lucy came with I to see the doctor’!
• Nor should we say ‘Lucy and myself went to the doctor’ (although I have heard similar).

 Here’s another one:

• ‘Since we won the Lottery, life has become much easier for my wife, family and me as we have been able to pay off all our debts.’  (Lucky things…)

We wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) say:

• Since we won the Lottery life has become much easier for my wife, family and I.’

If we take away ‘wife and family’ you can see that it doesn’t sound right for the speaker to say:

• ‘Since we won the Lottery, life has become much easier for I.’

Nor, for that matter should we say:

• ‘Since we won the Lottery life has become much easier for myself.’

This is because there is nothing to ‘reflect’ off or be’ intense’ about.
 

Yeah, I know, picky, picky!  However – remember that if we communicate clearly with one another we are much more likely to be clearly understood and to get our message across without any errors.
 

Grammar is really just putting things in the right order and therefore lessening the risk of being misunderstood.  Remember, too, that the English language constantly evolves and who knows what the rules might be in a decade or so…