Comment by coriny | Hacker News Reader

Comment by coriny | Hacker News Reader

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Well, I can't say much about the reality of the FBI approach, y'all seems to have that better covered.

Instead, I'm led to ask at what point will people stop using "myself" as a formal version of "me"? It isn't, it actually has a completely different usage.

In this case: "the SR Server was located by myself and another member of the CY-2". Here 'by myself' means 'on my own', not 'by me', so it directly confuses the meaning of this sentence. To me the obvious meaning is that they both work independently and found the same thing.

About the only other time you can use '-self' is in the reflexive, as in "I did this to myself", "you do this to yourself". I will never do something to yourself, and you will never do something to myself.

So, I know this is completely out of place, but if I can get one person to not do this in the future, I will make my life a bit happier. Also if I can persuade that small group of nameless people (you know who you are) that "could care less" actually means the opposite of what they think it does; and that "alot" is not a word.

I'm all for the English language evolving and expanding, but let's weed out the bad ideas which only increase confusion and bring nothing good. And seriously, "alot"? "Lot" is a three letter word, it's not hard to spell. As for "a" ...

I understand your confusion, but this is a common usage case for the nominative first person of "me" in formal speech. This is one of a gajillion special case word choice situations. This particular sentence structure (Direct object, past perfect verb, subject) suggests "myself". However, the writer should have put in the other person's name before "myself", as is common practice, leading to confusion.

Consider: "the SR Server was located by another member of the CY-2 and myself".

I'm not claiming that "me" wouldn't parse, but that using the current rules properly would not cause confusion in the first place. Someone is trying to sound intelligent, while putting their name first so as to emphasize their contribution.

So, I'm definitely not confused :)

I do appreciate it's very common in what I'd call pseudo-formal speech, mostly used when trying to impress someone one perceives to be of higher social station. Estate agents do it a lot when talking to clients. And so it does have the "well, lots of people do it" support.

However, if you go back to the roots (Latin), "myself" is specifically the reflexive form of the first person. When the first person is the object or the dative, it is "me/to me". So to have correct agreement with the verb, your example should end in "and me".

While your example is easy enough to parse, it doesn't actually follow the rules - though maybe the common practice. And if you rearrange the two object nouns (i.e. back to the original) the sentence loses clarity. Using "me" never loses clarity, and the ordering of object nouns shouldn't matter beyond providing emphasis.

Basically, that example is ok in Perl, but not in Java ;)

And ultimately, using the reflexive form incorrectly never makes a sentence clearer, and it's longer to write and say.

Anyway, this is so far off the OP's topic, which is actually much more important & interesting, I do apologise to him/her.

The case you cite, "the SR server was located by myself and another member..." is not ambiguous at all. For "by myself" to take on the "on my own" meaning, the sentence would need "I" as its subject:

"I located the SR server by myself.", not "The SR server was located by myself", which I don't think anyone, even those using this objectionable form, would produce.

I understand and sympathize with your distaste for the expression: it goes against previous rules of formal written English, and it signals the style adopted by people speaking for organizations attempting to convey power and control, which goes against the anti-authoritarian ethos of HN. But these sorts of judgments are usually motivated by deeply-held feelings and then rationalized as pleas for clarity and precision in language.

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