About the use of “myself”

[crispysausagerolls]

Yes it’s petty, yes it’s stupid, yes there have been multiple threads on it but ffs i have just opened 3 threads in a row where people say “myself and DH” or “DS and myself”!

STOP ITTTTTT!!!!!!! 😬😬😬😭😭😭🙈🙈🙈

It’s almost as annoying as the use of caps lock and emojis 😄

Oh I so agree re "invite". I work in comms and the other day we were about to send out a message saying "you will receive an invite to this meeting" argh no they won't! Senior people had seen it too. Luckily I persuaded my boss that we should change it to invitation.

An yy don't get me started on cold callers (often is them, sorry) "I just wanted to discuss with yourself how you could save money..." I use it back to them and it sounds do stupid. Sometimes they realise that.

I agree with pp, it's because people don't read.

And site/sight and - the worse - I seen him instead of I saw him. Drives me mad on SM.

I blame news organisations for this - the weird thing they started doing about 5/10 years ago of reporting everything in the present tense - it has confused people. "The thief enters the building, pulls out a gun and fires!" FFS, this happened yesterday!

I have to disagree with you there NannyOgg. I don't think middle management are promoted beyond their competency. It's rather a question of qualifications having become more important than education. I see people all the time who are phenomenally well qualified but very badly educated. It's rare nowadays to come across people who are well educated but who have few qualifications.

@NewNewt

And site/sight and - the worse - I seen him instead of I saw him. Drives me mad on SM.

I blame news organisations for this - the weird thing they started doing about 5/10 years ago of reporting everything in the present tense - it has confused people. "The thief enters the building, pulls out a gun and fires!" FFS, this happened yesterday!

The dramatic use of the present tense goes back to the Romans I’m afraid- I remember learning it in Latin at school

Fair point about the Latin - but shouldn't be on The News!

Can I add in “needs gone” or “needs spoken” instead of “needs TO GO” or “needs TO BE SAID”.

Where does this word salad even come from?

Poor English grammar is not a reflection of character. This thread is awful. Goady and judgemmetal

There’s always one!

I listened to a wonderful rerun of Cabin Pressure on the radio earlier, with John Finnemore as the dim Arthur the cabin crew ( singular) making brilliant comedic use of the corporate speak ‘myself’ during increasingly tangled announcements.

Poor English grammar is not a reflection of character. This thread is awful. Goady and judgemmetal

Is that a variant of Heavy Metal ?

Poor English grammar is not a reflection of character. This thread is awful. Goady and judgemmetal

It is not. It is a place for pedants to come and moan to each other in peace.

PP has beaten me to the use of "invite" instead of INVITATION but there's also "electric" instead of ELECTRICITY, or even worse, "lekky

and rads for radiators

YANBU

I also hate “DH and I” when it’s used incorrectly

Borrow and lend

“I done”

Should of

Bare with me

The ones that drive me mad are the use of 'less' when it should be 'fewer' and when people say, "I/she was sat..."
Another one, which I think is more of a spoken thing, is the constant use of, "...she turned round and said...so I turned round and said..."
Also the use of apostrophes for plurals. You see it more when a word ends in a vowel, for example, menu's.
Shudder.

I read a newspaper article about it once - I think it was Matthew Parris in The Times. I thought he put forward a plausible explanation when he said people seem to use it when they want to be ultra-polite, almost as though ‘yourself’ is like saying ‘your majesty’; for example “I hope this proposal will be acceptable to yourself”.

I can no longer waste energy on being exasperated by it, along with incorrect and over use of the word ‘literally’. (“I was literally on my way home when he rang to ask if I would be much longer“). Similarly with “obviously” when the context has nothing whatsoever to do with obviousness. And splitting an infinitive with “obviously” (“We need to obviously score another goal if we’re going to win this game”). Is there room for me in Pedants’ Corner? I know my place.

@JellyfishandShells

Going to look that up

I agree with you OP, though I think it's a losing battle.

It will work it's way into common useage, just as literally as a form of exaggeration has.

I cringe every time I hear it though.

Ohtherewearethen

My husband is a less/fewer pedant. He seems to think he's Stannis Baratheon

@Ohtherewearethen

The ones that drive me mad are the use of 'less' when it should be 'fewer' and when people say, "I/she was sat..." Another one, which I think is more of a spoken thing, is the constant use of, "...she turned round and said...so I turned round and said..." Also the use of apostrophes for plurals. You see it more when a word ends in a vowel, for example, menu's. Shudder.

I've got a bit of sympathy with the less and fewer. The myself/me/I one is easy to work out for someone who's not sure, but less and fewer is something you have to remember.

Just leaving this here for those who will appreciate it

And site/sight and - the worse - I seen him instead of I saw him.

Do you mean "the worst"?

I hate alot, infront, inbetween, thankyou, etc.

And the confusion of "non" and "none", depending on your spoken accent. Non is not a word.

I once wrote “literally” on a thread here, as a hyperbolic touch. I got absolutely destroyed 🙈😂

It is the language of every Detective Inspector in the land:

Myself
Yourself
We would ask
We would say

Stop it. Speak plainly. Don't be a dufus.

The one that really pisses me off is when people finish every sentence with an exclamation mark! Like they don’t know that there are other forms of punctuation available to them! I read it completely differently to how I would read a regular sentence! It drives me fucking insane!

Almost as bad are those who neglect to use any punctuation whatsoever so whatever they have written just becomes one long barely coherent stream that makes my eyes hurt just to look at it and I feel out of breath even though I’m not saying it out loud

Similarly with “obviously” when the context has nothing whatsoever to do with obviousness.

God yes, it’s used as oral punctuation, I have a colleague who does this, puts the word in every other sentence and I have to stick my nails into my palm to stop myself shouting “no it’s not bloody obvious!”