“Me, Myself, & I”
“Oh yeah? Who’s gonna make me?”
“Three people — me, myself, and I.”
I remember that retort from 3rd grade, along with “Oh yeah? You and what army?”
Me, myself, and I. Simple as an answer to a challenge in elementary school, but actually knowing when to use each one can be a challenge.
In the grammar books, we find that I is to be used for subjective cases and me is for objective. Therefore, when that first person pronoun is the subject, it should be I, such as “I went to the festival.” Or, “Deena and I went to the festival”.
When you need the first person pronoun for an object (usually object of preposition), it would be “me”, such as “Hand that to me.” Or “That is a picture of me” or even “That is a picture of Jeffrey and me.”
I think we do fairly well when we have to choose between I and me alone or even, as in the cases above, when there is a name of another person. The problem seems to come in when we have another pronoun. That is where we end up with things like “Him and me are headed to the bank.” Or “That book belongs to she and I.” Both of those are wrong. Currently, the error seems to tend more toward overuse of “I”.
I think, as I mentioned in the blog about apostrophes, the speaker or writer is trying to be correct, but is overdoing it, and thus, getting it wrong. Just as you would with a proper noun, break it down to see what is needed.
Example 1 — Him and me are headed to the bank.
Would you say “Him are headed to the bank”? Would you say “Me is headed to the bank”? When you see how ridiculous those sound, you know this should be “He and I”.
Example 2 — That book belongs to she and I.
That sounds correct to so many people because they’re scared of getting it wrong. “I” seems to sound more ….intelligent, more cultured. But break it down. In this case, would you say “That book belongs to she”? Would you say “That book belongs to I”? Of course not. Therefore, the book belongs to “her and me”.
It gets more difficult in such instances as “The one who has been wrong is I/me.” Technically, because the pronoun is in place as a predicate nominative (renaming the noun), it would be “I” here, but that sounds way too awkward. You can either use “me”. Or do what I would do and invert the sentence to say “I’m the one who has been wrong.” When in doubt, you can almost always find another way to say what you need to.
Now “myself”. There’s one that’s hitting on trouble. Lately I’ve heard, “Please contact Sherry or myself if you have a problem.” Why does that sound correct? “Myself” doesn’t have that many correct uses. It’s mostly used to clarify, such as “I myself will be the one throwing the party”, when someone else thinks it’s going to be them! Or “I will handle that myself”, same use as previous — to clarify or to rename yourself for emphasis. I can’t think of any instance when “myself” should be used when I or me would suffice as in “Please contact Sherry or me if you have a problem.” I would think the rule we could have here is to simply try “I” or “me” first before using “myself” and see if it works. If it does, go with it.
Me, Myself, and I. One person, three forms, lots of troubles. Watch out.