Sunday, 4 November 2007
Me, myself and I
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“I” is the first person singular pronoun when one is the subject of a sentence and “me” is the first person singular pronoun when one is the object. So “Tom, Dan and I made fun of the grammatically inaccurate drunk in the pub” is correct. However “the drunken man and his friends beat the living crap out of Tom, Dan and I” is incorrect.
I find this mistake especially annoying as it tends to be made by people trying too hard to avoid the word 'me' because it doesn't sound formal. In trying to sound clever they are making the same mistake they want to avoid. My advice: don't be so poncey!
Myself is another form that people wanting to appear grammatical like to overuse. PaulBrains* Brians covers this matter in his book Common Errors in English Usage, which I would suggest you all should buy if it wasn't freely available online.
A reader has emailed in.
Hi,Christan, get out that soap box, chrome-plate it, polish it until it gleams, jump on it, brandish your megaphone with a smug flourish and shout about your peeve to your heart's content because you are absolutely right.
One of my biggest pet peeves is when people on Facebook or Myspace will put captions on their photos reading "John, Bill, and I" or "Mark and I at the beach". Shouldn't it be "John, Bill, and me"? You wouldn't show a picture to someone and say "this is I at the beach". You would say "this is me at the beach" so shouldn't you use "me" even when you add other people's names to it?
Just wanted to make sure I was correct before I jumped on my soap box.
Thanks,
Christan
“I” is the first person singular pronoun when one is the subject of a sentence and “me” is the first person singular pronoun when one is the object. So “Tom, Dan and I made fun of the grammatically inaccurate drunk in the pub” is correct. However “the drunken man and his friends beat the living crap out of Tom, Dan and I” is incorrect.
I find this mistake especially annoying as it tends to be made by people trying too hard to avoid the word 'me' because it doesn't sound formal. In trying to sound clever they are making the same mistake they want to avoid. My advice: don't be so poncey!
Myself is another form that people wanting to appear grammatical like to overuse. Paul
'Myself' is no better than 'I' as an object. 'Myself' is not a sort of all-purpose intensive form of 'me' or 'I'. Use 'myself' only when you have used 'I' earlier in the same sentence: 'I am not particularly fond of goat cheese myself.' 'I kept half the loot for myself.'Quite right, Paul. He goes on to summarise this topic better than I ever could, so I'll sneak out for a cup of tea while Paul finishes off for me.
All this confusion can easily be avoided if you just remove the second party from the sentences where you feel tempted to use “myself” as an object or feel nervous about “me.” You wouldn’t say, “The IRS sent the refund check to I,” so you shouldn’t say “The IRS sent the refund check to my wife and I” either. And you shouldn’t say “to my wife and myself.” The only correct way to say this is, “The IRS sent the refund check to my wife and me.” Still sounds too casual? Get over it.*Well done for spotting my deliberate mistake, MRP. Good to know you are paying attention.
Labels: facebook, grammar, myspace, pet peeves, pronoun, reading list, top ten
posted by Gez at 5:38 pm
141 Comments
Tuesday, 17 July 2007
Calm down, take a deep breath and count to 10.
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AAAAAARRRGH! It makes me want to break something.
I don't know why but I expect more from Facebook users than say, MySpace or Bebo users. Maybe it's because Facebook started as an academic network site; or maybe it's because of articles such as this from the BBC or blog posts making statements such as Facebookers are voters, MySpacers are not. Maybe it's because I'm hopelessly addicted to Facebook and don't want it to become representative of that which I loath - like Pete Doherty telling people that crack isn't that bad, it's just the press blowing things out of proportion.
You may have noticed that the name and picture in the screengrab above have been scrambled to protect the not-so-innocent. However if you recognise this from your wall, you should have a word with your friend and point out the error of his ways. As Dan alluded to, I guess most of us have friends who use "txt spk" or its more hardcore cousin, "L33t speak" when texting, emailing and social-network-site-ing (someone really needs to come up with a snappy, generic verb for that).
When one has a friend who is a persistent offender, it can be tempting to ignore the infractions. For much the same reasons I try my best to ignore the massive mole on the side of a particular mate's face. The difference being, short of surgery, my mate with the mole can't do much about his affliction, whereas people who write, "gud 1 m8!!!" can and should be reformed.
I urge you all to attempt the same. Be persistent - no-one likes constantly being corrected, so either the friend will see the light or he/she will stop texting you. Either way, job done!
L8rz!!
Recently seen on a friend's Facebook wall:
AAAAAARRRGH! It makes me want to break something.I don't know why but I expect more from Facebook users than say, MySpace or Bebo users. Maybe it's because Facebook started as an academic network site; or maybe it's because of articles such as this from the BBC or blog posts making statements such as Facebookers are voters, MySpacers are not. Maybe it's because I'm hopelessly addicted to Facebook and don't want it to become representative of that which I loath - like Pete Doherty telling people that crack isn't that bad, it's just the press blowing things out of proportion.
You may have noticed that the name and picture in the screengrab above have been scrambled to protect the not-so-innocent. However if you recognise this from your wall, you should have a word with your friend and point out the error of his ways. As Dan alluded to, I guess most of us have friends who use "txt spk" or its more hardcore cousin, "L33t speak" when texting, emailing and social-network-site-ing (someone really needs to come up with a snappy, generic verb for that).
When one has a friend who is a persistent offender, it can be tempting to ignore the infractions. For much the same reasons I try my best to ignore the massive mole on the side of a particular mate's face. The difference being, short of surgery, my mate with the mole can't do much about his affliction, whereas people who write, "gud 1 m8!!!" can and should be reformed.
I urge you all to attempt the same. Be persistent - no-one likes constantly being corrected, so either the friend will see the light or he/she will stop texting you. Either way, job done!
L8rz!!
posted by Gez at 10:37 pm
4 Comments
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