Yourself/myself instead of you/me

[shineypenny]

These are used increasingly in emails and now even conversation (cringe):

'I spoke to yourself on the telephone yesterday...'
'It was done by my colleague and myself' or, even worse, 'It was done by myself'

What's wrong with
'I spoke to you on the telephone yesterday'
'It was done by my colleague and me' and 'I completed it'

Sorry if this has been discussed before, but this is really grating at me at the moment.

Me too! It makes me think the speaker/writer is thick and trying (and failing) to sound clever.

Yes indeed Body.
Officious PC Plod speak.
I know someone who does it regularly and want to throttle him.

drives me bloody mental!!!

YANBU

It's just awful. As is the inappropriate use of the expression "to be fair" at the start of a sentence.

Absolutely.

It's just trying to enhance the level of you conversation and failing miserably.

I, personally, grates terribly as well.

your

Phew! It's not just me then - I was a bit worried as it's my first thread on this board :)

I work in a (supposedly highly academic) public school where they all do it - bunch of morons if you ask me.

Ah, but, shineypenny, some public schools aim to do nothing less than thwart social mobility! Why would they penalise sloppy grammar within their walls? T'might mean expulsion into that dark realm of "people not like us"!

P.S. I speak as the recipient of rather a lot of private education , so hope I may be rude about it!

I hate this too! I remember learning a rule at school that when talking about two people, you would use the term that would be correct if the other person wasn't included. I have explained that badly but what I mean is if I were to write a sentence saying "please do not hesitate to contact me or Bob" If Bob wasn't included it would be "please do not hesitate to contact me" which is fine. Why then do I so often get emails which say "please do not hesitate to contact myself or Bob" IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!

It REALLY bugs me and I find it hard not to correct colleagues who do it all the time. I thought it was just "myself"
who gets stupidly annoyed about it!

Ugh, one if my friends does this on FB. She will put things like 'Paul and myself had a lovely day out at xxx'

I love her, but I feel like she's trying to be posh or clever or something when she does it.

Drives me up the wall. People tend to do it because they think it sounds more educated, but is, of course, the opposite.

"Paul and myself had a lovely day out at xxx"

Yes, it does sound like a press-release, doesn't it?

Such pomposity.

While we are at it, I LOATHE it when people use the term one: 'One must not' or 'It is expected of one' .... have they never heard of the word' I' ???

Referring to yourself as "one" is indeed really awful, however using it to mean a person in general is fine.

So - "One went to the shops today." = twat

"One should not walk on the grass" = less accusatory than using "you" in that sentence

I think the main reason it occurs is because of over-correction of terms.

the ones who don't understand the rules remember it being drummed into them at school that it's not "me", so they think that means whenever they want to say "me", it must be wrong, so they use Myself istead.
what they don't understand is t hat the "me" referred to only affects when it should be "I".

so: Paul and I went to the shops.
they will have had it drummed into them that it's not "paul and me went to the shops" and they over-correct sentences that should be me.
eg: Please contact Paul or Me.
so they think "ooh, I was told not to use Me, and I doesn't sound right, so I must have to use myself"

But you would reasonably say 'I sent it to myself' or 'you saw it yourself'

'One' is surely only the domain of royalty - One is not amused!!

I was brought up on the use of 'one'. Does that mean I'm royalty? Do you serfs bow before me now?

Improper use of reflexive pronouns, my blood is boiling, grrr.

Speaking of "one", I have a pedantic French friend (an English teacher), who is infuriated by the increasing tendency of French yoof to use "on" instead of "nous". Funnily enough, my friend doesn't find it posh or royal-like at all; she finds it illiterate, and hates it!

That's interesting, plupervert, I'll try to remember that.

OP, would it be very rude of me on a pedants' thread that there's no 'e' in shiny?

"would it be very rude of me on a pedants' thread that there's no 'e' in shiny? "

LeBOF, would it be very rude of me on a pedants' thread to ask what the missing words are in your sentence?

i hate this with a passion - but am surprised to hear that it's rife at public school. i went to a VERY posh university and the students there from very posh public schools would never have used this.

i heard it originally from car salesmen and mobile phone salesmen and estate agents - all of whom seem to want to sound more 'business'... but now i hear it all over the place, though it's more english (estuary english or essex) than scottish in my experience.

Well, I was going to share my theory that hundreds of MNers now genuinely spell shiny as shiney, as a result of too much time spent here, but I figured it might be superfluous in case there was a different reason.