Have you ever wondered how to avoid responsibility, especially in your writing? Use passive voice! Chris Bray explains this well in a Substack post. Check out his “Thank You for Holding Still While I Hurt You” post.
Passive Voice
“I will have the flowers delivered to Jim and myself.”
Passive Voice, Pronouns“I will have the flowers delivered to Jim and myself.” is an example of a type of sentence that I have heard often.
While the speaker deserves kudos for putting the third person — Jim, in this case — before himself, his erroneous use of the pronoun “myself” in this sentence deserves discussion.
One basic test of a pronoun in a sentence is to remove all associated nouns or pronouns to see whether the pronoun is correct.
When we remove “Jim and” from the original sentence, “I will have the flowers delivered to myself.” is the result.
Why is “myself” the incorrect pronoun in this simplified sentence?
Perhaps the best way to explain this is to talk about passive voice.
Who will deliver the flowers? We do not know!
Both the original sentence and the simplified sentence are in passive voice.
That is, there is an unidentified actor who will deliver the flowers.
The word “myself” can be either a reflexive pronoun or an intensive pronoun:
- Reflexive: “I hit myself on the head.” — The recipient of the person doing the hitting is the person doing the hitting! In other words, “myself” reflects the hitter (“I”).
- Intensive: “I painted the house myself.” — The painter of the house is emphasizing that he, and nobody else, painted the house. In other words, “myself” intensifies the painter (“I”).
Given that the unidentified actor is a third person and not the first-person singular “I” in the original or simplified sentence, it becomes clear that “myself” cannot be correct.
“I will have the flowers delivered to me.” becomes obvious as the corrected form of the simplified sentence, and “I will have the flowers delivered to Jim and me.” becomes obvious as the corrected form of the original sentence.
“Photos are always welcome.”
Devolution toward Simpler, Outsider's Perspective, Passive Voice, VerbsAn American wrote this sentence the other day in an email message to my wife.
Having lived several years in England, she told me that it looked odd to her.
She would have written “Photos are always welcomed.” — with a “d” at the end.
In other words, she sees this as a passive-voice sentence (in which the actor is not specified).
The active-voice form of the sentence could be “We always welcome photos.”
Given that speaking or writing in the passive voice requires the use of the past participle of a verb, the passive-voice form of “We always welcome photos.” requires the past participle “welcomed” — with a “d” at the end.
I believe that the American tendency to drop the “d” from the past participle “welcomed” in “Photos are always welcomed.” is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis.
It is simpler to say “welcome” (without the “d”) than to say “welcomed” (with the “d”). And, even if someone says “welcomed” (with the “d”), many American listeners will not hear the “d” and will write “welcome” (without the “d”) instead.