OK, well I’ll confess straight away that I’m a stickler for correct grammar.  But it is my job and getting it right is important when it comes to earning (most) of my money. If I don’t edit a book well … then who is going to give me work?

As I’ve written here before, language and spelling are forever changing. You can see this immediately you pick up an old book, written perhaps in the early to mid-20th century, and spellings (if not updated) are different; the use of some words is different or even obsolete.  Frankly, you notice it when you’re my age! Younger people use some words in a different way. But while different publishing houses have different house styles, which allows for a certain personal preference, there is a large core of correct grammar to which all will adhere.  Enter ‘myself’.

There seems to be a epidemic of people misusing ‘myself’ and, to be honest, as a book editor to whom these things matter, it drives me slightly crazy.  Even BBC radio and TV presenters use it incorrectly. I’m not talking about informal, chatty programmes, where a certain relaxation is not only OK but generally desired. No, I’m talking about the News and other serious programmes. There are regional differences, of course.  For example, I’m aware that in some parts of the country ‘myself’ is used differently to the way those of us living in London use it. But this tends to be in the spoken word.

I can quite understand that many people will not care, or will wonder why on earth I’m making a fuss about this. But if you’re reading this blog, there’s a good chance you either hope to be or are a writer, or you have a keen interest in the written word. And knowing whether the written word is grammatically correct is important – even if you don’t always write that way.

A common misuse I hear is: ‘Myself and my mum’ or ‘My friend and myself’. No: ‘My mum and I‘ and ‘My friend and I‘.  Another example of misuse is, ‘The waiter gave my friend and myself cups of coffee’, which should be: ‘The waiter gave my friend and me cups of coffee‘.  And no, it wouldn’t be ‘… my friend and I’ either. To immediately see this is incorrect, try saying ‘the waiter gave I a cup of coffee’. It’s easier to see that’s wrong. Taking out the other person in the sentence often lets you see whether the sentence works or not. For example, if you say: ‘Myself and John went to the cinema’ and take out ‘John’, you’d have, ‘Myself went to the cinema’ – which you can immediately see is incorrect; nor would you say (if you were being grammatically correct), ‘John and me went to the cinema’ – trying testing it: ‘Me went to the cinema’. That doesn’t sound at all right. You’d say, ‘I went to the cinema‘ so it’s ‘John and I went to the cinema‘.

The use of ‘myself’ is correct when it’s used as a reflexive pronoun – when the person is both the subject and the object. ‘Myself’ reflects the subject: ‘I told myself‘, ‘I dressed myself‘. It can also be used for emphasis: ‘I made it myself‘ – but here you can see that just ‘I made it’ would be OK.

The same rules apply to ‘yourself’: ‘I look forward to seeing you‘ not ‘I look forward to seeing yourself’.

If you’re writing a novel, then you might use words like ‘myself’ in a grammatically incorrect way in speech, depending on the character. As a copy-editor, I have to make a decision about whether it’s appropriate – or simply the author not being grammatically correct. However, if you’re writing something important and formal – like a business letter, perhaps – I believe it’s always important to get the grammar right. Hopefully this little blog post will help!