Common English Blunders

“Please send that file to Ellen or myself.”

Common English Blunders, Pronouns

I heard this during a conference call.

Problem:
“Myself” is the wrong pronoun.

Explanation:
This sentence is an imperative; the speaker is asking the listener to send something to Ellen or to him. This sentence can not be reflexive; the speaker is not talking about something that he is doing for/by himself. “Myself” is a reflexive pronoun, so it’s not the correct pronoun here in this non-reflexive sentence. Instead, “me” is the correct pronoun. To confirm this, imagine the speaker asking the listener to send something only to him: “Please send that file to me.” Adding “Ellen or ” has no impact; “me” remains the correct pronoun.

Solution:
“Please send that file to Ellen or me.”

“Please send it to he and I.”

Common English Blunders, Pronouns

I heard this during a conference call.

Problems:
1. He is the wrong pronoun.
2. I is the wrong pronoun.

Explanations:
1. You should not say, “Please send it to he.” Instead, you should say, “Please send it to him.” Adding more parties to the list of those receiving what is to be sent makes no difference; the correct pronoun is still him.
2. You should not say, “Please send it to I.” Instead, you should say, “Please send it to me.” Adding more parties to the list of those receiving what is to be sent makes no difference; the correct pronoun is still me.

Solution:
“Please send it to him and me.”

Commas change third person to first person.

Commas, Common English Blunders

I instant-messaged someone whom I’ll call Kathy while talking with her in a conference call.

I wrote, “I asked, Kathy, about the session sheets because …”

She replied, “…who did you send this to?”

After some confusing back-and-forth, I realized that Kathy did not see the commas in what I initially wrote.

She thought that I wrote, “I asked Kathy about the session sheets because …” That would have been a third-person reference to Kathy. She thought that I had instant-messaged someone else with “I asked Kathy about the session sheets because …” before instant-messaging the same thing to her.

Instead, because I wrote, “I asked, Kathy, about the session sheets because …”, I was referring to her in the first person. I was trying to make my instant message more personal by pausing (with commas) to include her name.

Lessons:
1. Commas can change a third-person reference to a first-person reference.
2. Don’t assume that readers will see your commas, especially in an instant-messaging situation.
3. Don’t assume that a reader who sees your commas will know that these are equivalent to pauses in the spoken version of what you write. If a reader can’t “hear” the pauses implied by the commas, then the reader will read a first-person reference as a third-person reference.