Lucky Dip

Useful Information No 17: I, me and myself

Some people have difficulty with the use of ‘me’. They think that ‘me’ is often wrong. They choose to say and write ‘Between you and I’ because they think that ‘Between you and me’ is incorrect, albeit they don’t know why.

But ‘Between you and me’ is grammatically correct. So is ‘Thank you for meeting my sister and me.’ You wouldn’t say or write ‘Thank you for meeting I.’ So why would you write ‘Thank you for meeting my sister and I’?

Another way that people take to avoid the problem they have with the use of ‘me’ is to write ‘Thank you for meeting myself.’ An extreme form of this avoidance is to write, ‘It was a pleasure for myself to meet yourself.’ ‘Myself’ should be reserved for expressions such as:

• I hurt myself

• I did it myself (that is, on my own, without assistance)

The use of ‘We, us and ourselves’ follows the same rules.

‘I’, used when ‘me’ is correct, is sometimes referred to as ‘the toff’s pronoun’, because its use betrays the user as someone who aspires to refined speech without realizing that the usage is wrong. Best avoided, then.