The Grammar Mistake You Make Trying To Sound Smart

There are a few linguistic tricks we all tend to fall back on to sound smarter, such as tossing around an obscure term, dropping in some piece of specialized jargon, or choosing a formal-sounding word when a simpler one will do.

Sometimes, those attempts to sound sophisticated can backfire — and not because of a mangled attempt at a complicated pronunciation. In fact, one of the most revealing examples of grammar gone wrong can be found in a tiny two-letter word: “me.”

Somewhere along the way, “me” acquired a bad reputation. We’ve been taught that “I” is the more proper choice, and “myself” can sound even more polished. So instead of saying, “Please send the report to Victoria and me,” someone might opt for “Please send the report to Victoria and myself,” apparently hoping to give the sentence a little grammatical oomph.

Unfortunately, this ends up doing the opposite.

There’s a name for this particular grammatical overreach: hypercorrection. In other words, we’re so afraid of getting it wrong that we use a word we think sounds more correct — and end up getting it wrong anyway.

“Me” vs. “myself” is a particularly good example.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with “myself.” It’s a perfectly useful word when it’s doing what a reflexive pronoun is supposed to do, which is refer back to the subject of the sentence. You can say, “I hurt myself,” “I bought myself a new car,” or even “I told myself to calm down.” In each case, “myself” is referring back to the person doing the action. (If you replace the subject of each of the examples with “she” or “he,” you would use the corresponding reflexive pronoun, “herself” or “himself.”) A reflexive pronoun can also be used for emphasis, as in, “I myself confirmed the order.”

What you generally can’t do is use “myself” as a more sophisticated stand-in for “me.” That’s where sentences such as “Please send the report to Victoria and myself” go wrong. The report is being sent to Victoria and “me.” Adding another person to the sentence can make the pronoun choice feel trickier, but it’s not. There’s a simple way to check your grammar: Take Victoria out of the sentence.

“Please send the report to myself.”

That sounds wrong because it is. You’d say, “Please send the report to me.” So put Victoria back in, and you get: “Please send the report to Victoria and me.”

Of course, it’s not only “me” that gets incorrectly replaced. Sometimes the appropriate pronoun is “I.” The same problem crops up when “myself” gets put into the subject position: “Victoria and myself will attend the meeting.”

Again, take Victoria out: “Myself will attend the meeting” is clearly wrong. The correct version is “Victoria and I will attend the meeting.”

The trick above is useful for native English speakers who have an ear for correct grammar, but the problem still persists, even among folks who pride themselves on their proper spelling and punctuation. It goes back to one of the most deeply ingrained grammar lessons many of us received in school: Don’t say “Me and Victoria.” Say “Victoria and I.”

That advice isn’t wrong. In “Victoria and I went to the meeting,” “I” is part of the subject. But the lesson is often remembered as simply: “I” is good; “me” is bad. And that’s where things start to go sideways.

Consider these two sentences: 

Both of these examples are correct. In the first one, we are both performing the action, so “I” is correct. In the second, we are both the objects of the action, so “me” is correct.

If you’re unsure, again, remove the other person from the sentence. You wouldn’t say, “Me went to the meeting.” You also wouldn’t say, “The editor called I.” 

The fear of getting that distinction wrong has given us one of English’s most enduring hypercorrections: “Between you and I … ” It sounds formal. It sounds polished. It sounds like something someone who cares deeply about grammar might say. It’s also traditionally considered incorrect.

Since the word “between” is a preposition, the pronoun that follows it should be in the objective case: “between you and me.”

Again, “I” isn’t a fancier version of “me”; they’re two words that simply have different grammatical jobs. And “myself” isn’t a fancier version of either one. That may be the central lesson of the hypercorrection phenomenon: A word doesn’t magically become more correct just because it sounds more formal.