>As a non-native english speaker, I'm absolutely not in a position to tell right from wrong, but speaking a germanic language (Dutch and English are from the same family) I'll throw my 2 cents in here.
>
>>>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."
>
>Hmmm, I've been using this quite frequent in cases where I want to emphasize and stress the myself part. Is this wrong?

See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflexive_pronoun

When the rerlexive pronoun is being used it is because the action "reflects" back on the subject. I can kill myself but no one else can kill myself; they can kill themselves or me.

So how can I explain this to yourself?

>
>BTW, I find much of this stuff knitpicking anyways.

Yes. I'm a nit-picker (from picking nits, louse eggs, from the hair - not unpicking someone's stitches)

> Language is a living organism defined by the ones who use it. In holland the situation is much worse and shamefull. Some elite who absolutely have no respect for the world outside themselves change the spelling rules every few years. So whatever I learned at school in terms of spelling certain words does not apply anymore. I'm high educated, but ashamed to admit that I would not have a clue how to spell certain words anymore because they changed the rules a couple of times. At least with english there isn't such problem (that I'm aware off).

BTW "... the world outside themselves ..." above would seem to be a case where "them" or "themselves" could be used.