Myself or Me?

Which of these sentences is grammatically correct: When you’ve finished the report, email a copy to Tom and myself, or When you’ve finished the report, email a copy to Tom and me. What is the difference, in other words, between myself and me in a sentence like this?

Both myself and me are pronouns, and English has quite a few species and uses of this basic part of speech. Grammarians have various ways to count and classify the pronouns, but every scheme begins with what is called the personal pronouns, and both myself and me are members of that class. A further distinction between simple and compound personal pronouns is often made. The difference between the two forms is obvious: the word me is composed of one element and is therefore simple; the word myself comprises two elements (my and self), and is therefore compound. There are many other personal pronouns, but let’s limit our discussion to these two at issue in the example sentences.

All of this, though, has to do with form, and we should remember in analysis that the form of a word is one thing, and its use is quite another. In order to revise our work confidently, we have to be able to account for both form and use when a question such as the one we’re examining here presents itself. If we focus, then, on the section of the sentence where the pronouns me and myself appear, we see at once that both are objects of the preposition to. That preposition has, in fact, two objects (Tom and myself or me), and we remember that the object of a preposition is always in the objective case. Both myself and me are indeed in the objective case, and so we can rule out a quick analysis of form to resolve our question.

We turn, then, to the grammatical use of each of these pronouns. Myself may be used as either an intensive or a reflexive pronoun. As an intensive, it emphasizes another word to which it refers: I myself read the report, or I read the report myself. In each of these sentences, the compound pronoun serves to highlight the subject, I, the first emphatically because of its adjacent position, the latter even more markedly so. As a reflexive, on the other hand, the pronoun myself must conform to a strict rule: a reflexive pronoun must refer to the subject of the clause in which it appears. If we look, then, at the first example sentence, When you’ve finished the report, email a copy to Tom and myself, the pronoun appears in the second clause, whose verb, email, is making a command. Such verbs are said to be in the imperative mood, and imperatives regularly omit their subject. Email a copy really means you email a copy; English includes the subject pronoun only for emphasis or clarification, and neither is needed here.

So does the pronoun myself serve either to emphasize or to reflect back on the subject of the verb of its clause? Emphatically not, and that, therefore, is reason enough—solid and cogent—to conclude that the first sentence is incorrect, no matter how many times we might hear such a construction. But why, then, is the second sentence grammatically correct? Let’s recall that the preposition to is governing the structure of this section of the sentence, and as a preposition, it must have an object. If the form me is correct (and it is), then its objective form marks it as a simple prepositional object. It refers logically to someone involved in the circumstances of the sentence, but that someone  is not the subject of the verb in the clause in which the pronoun me is involved. The clause merely commands someone to email the completed report to two people, Tom and me. The fact that the person represented by the pronoun me happens also to be the writer of the sentence (or issuer of the command) is grammatically irrelevant.

We have to keep, then, that grammatical requirements separate are distinct from the contextual logic of what we wish to communicate. Though grammar and logic complement each other as involved in the art of language, they each have their own domain, and each are due their distinct respect.

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