Me, Myself and I

[niadainud]

For the love of Lindley Murray, please can people stop using "myself" and "I" when they actually mean "me"?

"Myself and DP..." is never correct (at least I can't think of an example when it would be correct to begin a sentence in this way) and just sounds pretentious. "Myself" is a reflexive pronoun, or used for emphasis: "I hurt myself" or "I wouldn't do it like that myself".

"I" is for when you are the subject of the sentence (i.e. you are the one doing it): for example, "DP and I like to go dogging at the weekend."

"He came dogging with my DP and I" is wrong as "I" is being erroneously used as an object pronoun in that example.

In short, "me" is not a dirty word, even if "dogging" is.

Sorry, I know some people hate grammar threads that stray outside Pedants' Corner and I fully expect to be jumped on for any minor solecism I may have inadvertently committed, but I'm running out of patience with this one.

Oh, and while I'm at it, you're most probably "lying", not "laying", unless you are some sort of bird.

I sometimes get me and I mixed up when I'm talking about more than one person, and have to wind it back and think about what I'd say if I were just talking about myself.

At a formative age I got the impression that "And I" was more polite and it stuck.

Dear lord

I am genuinely asking the question (not being sarky):

what would the correct sentence be?

please come to mine & Fiona’s exhibition?

Fiona's and my exhibition.

Courtesy, etiquette puts Fiona first
Come to Fiona's exhibition.
But if it's your mutual exhibition then it's
Come to Fiona's and my exhibition
because if Fiona wasn't involved it would be
Come to my exhibition.

As PPs have said, Fiona's and my exhibition, but it's a clumsy construction so if I was bothered about how it sounded I might reword it as something like, "The exhibition that Fiona and I are putting on."

I’m not trying to be awkward but why is

The exhibition that Fiona and I are putting on

less clumsy than

Fiona's and my exhibition

Fair question. Entirely a matter of opinion, not based on any grammatical rule. It just feels clumsy to me, but you're very welcome to disagree!

Subjective and as both are correct I'm not going to fall out with you 🤗

I’d point at Fiona and say ‘come to our exhibition’.