Since my current job entails a great deal of technical writing, I constantly find myself struggling over the proper construction of certain grammatical statements. Believe it or not, the basic English words “Me”, “Myself”, and “I” can become quite a challenge to incorporate properly. Although these grammar errors are easily overlooked, I discover them in my own writing on a regular basis.

How many times have you made a statement constructed in the form of “Angel and me”, only to have some smarty pants correct you by explaining that it should be set up as “Angel and I”? The bottom line is that they may be wrong, but they could be right. The bitch of it is… it can go either way. It depends on whether you are the subject or the object of the statement.

So did “Angel and I go to the concert” or was it “Angel and me”? Just remove Angel from the equation. I wouldn’t say “Me went to the concert”. I would say “I went to the concert”. So, it was in fact “Angel and I” who attended the concert. But what if Angel handed out the concert tickets? Did “Angel hand Sam and I the concert tickets”? Or did “Angel hand Sam and me the concert tickets”? Well, Angel wouldn’t hand “I” a ticket, she would hand “me” a ticket. So under this circumstance, it is correct to say “Angel handed Sam and me the concert tickets”.

If you want to step it up a notch by using the word “Myself”, you could use it to emphasize your point of view. But, it should be neither the subject nor the object (unless the object is the subject… example in a sec), and it is certainly not a substitute for “Me” or “I”. You could say “Wow! I loved the concert, myself.” or “As the owner, I (the subject) am giving myself (the object) a large bonus.” But you would be incorrect in saying “I have concert tickets for you and myself”. The previous sentence should read “You and me”.

Sorry for boring you. I only wrote this out as a personal reminder to myself. If it helps someone else, fantastic.