by Laura Jones
Updated on October 7, 2024
Me, myself and I: Learn the proper way to use these English pronouns
English learners and native English speakers alike have trouble knowing when to use “I”, “me” or “myself”. The rules themselves are simple: “I” is a subject pronoun, “me” is an object pronoun and “myself” is a reflexive pronoun. Use the subject pronoun “I” when the speaker is performing the action. Use the object pronoun “me” when the speaker is receiving the action. Use “myself” when the subject and object are the same.
However, there are some very common mistakes we want to help you correct and we’re going to show you some examples when to use “me”, “I” or “myself” to make sure you get this grammar right every time.
“I” is a subject pronoun. A subject pronoun performs the action in a sentence. This is the most important point to remember when you’re wondering whether to use “I” or “me”. Subject pronouns replace nouns in sentences. Other subject pronouns are “you”, “he”, “she”, “it”, “we” and “they”. Note that “I” is always capitalized as a subject pronoun.
“Me” is an object pronoun. Like “I”, “me” refers to a first-person singular subject. However, unlike “I”, and unlike any subject pronoun, object pronouns receive the action in a sentence. Again, this is a really important thing to remember when you’re not sure if you should write “I” or “me”. Other object pronouns are “you”, “him”, “her”, “it”, “us” and “them”.
You will hear lots of people, including native English speakers, making mistakes with the pronouns “I” and “me”. It usually happens when there is more than one object in a sentence. Look at this example and decide why it’s incorrect.
Most people will be able to tell that’s an incorrect sentence. The subject pronoun “I” shouldn’t be in this sentence as it’s not performing the action, Peggy is. So, “I” should be replaced by “me”.
This sentence has the opposite problem to the one above. Now the object pronoun “me” is trying to perform an action; remember, this is grammatically impossible! Try taking Tom out again.
When the subject and the object of a verb are the same, we use a reflexive pronoun as the object. Reflexive pronouns always end in -self or -selves, and “myself” is the first-person singular reflexive pronoun. Other reflexive pronouns are “yourself”, “himself”, “herself”, “itself”, “ourselves”, “yourselves” and “themselves”. If you use “myself” in a sentence, you should have “I” as the subject pronoun. The two go together like peanut butter and jelly.
The most common mistake people make with the reflexive pronoun “myself” is using it too much, most often in business lingo. Native speakers will very often say things like this:
Remember our rule about “I” and “myself” always appearing in sentences together? “I” isn’t in that sentence, so “myself” certainly shouldn’t be. Let’s take Ron out and see how the sentence looks:
The sentence should start with a subject pronoun here, doing an action. Let’s put Ron back in and correct the sentence:
Another common error is when “myself” is used as an object pronoun.
Let’s look at the sentence without Sue to see the mistake clearly:
You can see that this should be an object pronoun, as the subject and object are not the same.
Now you should be confident about when to use “I” or “me” in a sentence, and when “myself” should appear. Remember, the subject pronoun “I” performs an action. The object pronoun “me” receives an action done by a different subject. And, the reflexive pronoun “myself” is only used when the subject “I” is the same as the object, “myself”. Practice using these pronouns in sentences – and be ready to correct any native English speakers when they make mistakes!
