Me, myself and I: Keep them straight for clear meaning

Many people seem to be so afraid to misuse the words “me” and “I,” that they substitute “myself” in all kinds of inappropriate places.

It’s common to hear people say things like this: Please contact Squiggly, Aardvark, or myself with questions. Here’s why that’s wrong: The position of Squiggly, Aardvark, and the incorrect “myself” in the sentence are the object position, and “me” is the object pronoun you use to refer to yourself in a sentence like that.

An easy solution

The quick and dirty tip to get it right is to think about how you would say the sentence without Squiggly and Aardvark.

So here we go. You’d probably say, “Please contact me.”

I don’t know why people mess it up more when there are multiple people in the sentence, but they do. It’s not as if I’ve never heard anyone say, “Please contact myself,” but that kind of error is much more rare.

So once you know how to figure it out with just one person, you simply add in the other people: Please contact Squiggly, Aardvark, and me with questions. (You always put yourself last in a series like that.)

‘I’ is the subject pronoun