Friday, June 22, 2012

grammaticality - Reflexive pronoun (myself) grammar issue



I was writing in MS Word 2003, and it put a green underline under the word myself, as used below.




Don’t trust people, even myself, trust the code.




I ran the spell and grammar check, but it completed without any errors or suggestions.




If I change the sentence by adding "you should" after the comma, the problem goes away.




Don’t trust people, even myself, you should trust the code.




But that is not the preferred phrasing. What, if any, problems exist?



p.s. The closest I could find to this issue is Microsoft word and confusion about himself/he/him, but it does not help explain why I am right or wrong.


Answer




I'd agree with @RegDwigнt in that you should just write what you feel is the best way to say what you intend. That said, it's probably picking up on the fact that you say myself without referencing I. In theory, it wants you to write, "Don't trust people, even me, trust the code."



As a sidenote:
You have two separate clauses there: "don't trust people" and "trust the code". Rather than using the comma to separate them, personally I'd use a semicolon.




Don't trust people, even me/myself; trust the code.




Edit: I see the comments beat me to the semicolon lol.



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