>>>>>Use of these is getting worse. Some examples, not from real life, but typical of what I've experienced/heard a lot lately:
>>>>>
>>>>>"Hi Mr McDonnell. I was wondering if our offer has reached yourself yet."
>>>>>"Could you manage to make payment to ourselves by the end of the week."
>>>>>"We're sending the order to yourselves direct."
>>>>>"There's just myself and yourself here."
>>>>
>>>>Don't you just love those? In fact, a couple of my friends were talking to myself about this just the other day. ;)
>>>
>>>The moronic rule of thumb would appear to be "if the sentence requires a pronoun, replace it with one of those pronouns with 'self/selves' on the end"
>>
>>Yeah, drives me nuts, too. Here's what I have about this on my website (http://www.tomorrowssolutionsllc.com/writingtips.htm):
>>
>>Don't abuse the "self" words. These words ("myself," "yourself," etc.) belong in a sentence only if the corresponding pronoun has already appeared. For example, this is correct:
>>
>>"I'll take care of it myself."
>>
>>But this is wrong:
>>
>>"He had a meeting with John and myself."
>>
>>That should be:
>>
>>"He had a meeting with John and me."
>>
>>Tamar
>
>Interesting. I learned it somewhat differently. I learned that myself should only be used if the subject is 'you.' As in:
>
>I'll take care of it myself. I'm the subject so I can use myself.
>Mary gave a gift to John and me. I'm not the subject so I can't use myself.
>
>I tend to speak by habit now, but when I was in school, I used 'myself' if I used 'I' as the subject earlier in the sentence.

As in "I, me, myself, personally speaking, like ..."? :-)

>
>Or is that what you meant by 'corresponding pronoun?'