Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Criminal Sentence 468: Reflections on a Reflexive

From a book I read:

"In attendance were myself and Maggie."

This is just a bad sentence. "Myself" is called a reflexive pronoun and it refers back to I: "I myself love candy," you might say, or "I gave myself a present." A reflexive pronoun doesn't stand alone.

If we fix the pronoun problem, we get "In attendance were Maggie and I."

Still a terrible sentence. Why not just say, "Maggie and I attended"?

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