Use of 'Himself' or 'Herself'

Raphee said:

My word processor highlights the word HIMSELF or HERSELF as a reflexive pronoun. In spoken language we use it all the time.
Can you help explain, what is wrong with using this.

example:
She saw herself as a victim of her desires.

I made this one up. Not from my WIP. And if herself is wrong here, what is the alternate way to say this.

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I must be missing something. I don't see a problem.

1. Your word-processor is correct; in your example, "herself" is a reflexive pronoun.

2. Your sentence is correct when both spoken or written.

3. An alternate expression is, "She recognized she was a victim of her own desires." However, your example is just as good.

I have the same thing happening in one of my texts. Can't figure out what could be wrong with it, so I imagine it's just an MS Word quirk. Even Bill Gates doesn't know everything.

<----- No grammar expert

It took five minutes to extricate herself from his arms without him waking up, but the time was well-spent.

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I'd suggest either:

It took five minutes to extricate her from his arms...

or

She took five minutes to extricate herself from his arms...

Remember that the grammar checks in word processors are created for business writing, not creative writing. Thus, grammar checks are paranoid about all kinds of things that are perfectly fine, acceptable and GREAT in creative writing that would sink a business proposition.

Most grammar checkers can be reset to ignore the standard business rules that are customarily broken in creative writing, if you'd prefer.

Personally, I don't uncheck all of them because running through the grammar checker allows me to see if I'm using too many sentence fragments, etc, and check the flow of my work. But, then, I run it on purpose and don't leave it on all the time too. Those squiggly lines drive me nutsoid.

These reflexives are fine, but just like passive sentences are not appreciated by MS word grammar check.

mollyluna said:

Thanks Haggis, that was it. It seems so obvious now--reflexive pronoun WOULD be reflexive only if the subject was SHE. lol... Time to go to bed.

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Wait a minute. In your sentence the verb "extricate" has no subject. "It" is the subject of the verb "took", and it's therefore wrong to say:
But who would ever say that (unless it's a slip)?

"to extricte herself" is perfectly okay in your sentence. Take the minimally modified version:
If you add "her", there's no confusion whatsoever. So the question is whether you need the "her", and if you don't whether you have a better sentence when leaving it in or taking it out.

When you make general statements, it's quite common to leave out the direct object of "take":
Notice that the pronouns ("oneself", "yourself") are indefinite pronouns, here. ("You" is technically a personal pronoun, but it's used with a general meaning as an indefinite one, much like "singular they").

If you describe the agent of the verb "extricate" in more detail, you'll have to add the direct object of "take":
Now you can't use "one" or "you" anymore, because you've made the agent more specific and women require "her". (Note that you can't leave out "a woman" and still use "herself")

But what you're doing is different. You have a specific situation.

A: Hey, yesterday, I managed to free myself from Joe without waking him.
B: Cool!
A: Yeah, it took at least five minutes, though.

Do you really need "me" in the last sentence? ("Yeah, it took me at least...")

I think that the direct object in the "It took [one] [time] to [verb]" construction is optional, if we can work out in context whom it took that time. In short, I don't see any grammatical problem with your sentence.

Actually, the verb that relates to the reflexive pronoun could be part the subject:

Word is stupid when it comes to that, so I ignore its grammar check. There's nothing wrong with "he doesn't trust himself."

Moving to the Grammar forum.

The reason MSWord flags those is that it's designed to catch common errors in business writing.

What it wants to head off is someone writing "There were three people assigned to the project: Tom, Jerry, and myself." That would be wrong, of course.

It's rare that someone has a need to use a reflexive pronoun in a grammatically correct way in a business context. (Although it's fun to imagine it--"Dear Boss: Tom has got himself into quite a pickle with this latest project. When Jerry told me about the latest mess Tom had made, I had to interrogate myself about what to do.")

Raphee said:

My word processor highlights the word HIMSELF or HERSELF as a reflexive pronoun. In spoken language we use it all the time.
Can you help explain, what is wrong with using this.

example:
She saw herself as a victim of her desires.

I made this one up. Not from my WIP. And if herself is wrong here, what is the alternate way to say this.

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There's nothing wrong with using it that way. Word is just pretty useless. Open office, even worse at grammar/puntuation IMO. I had the exact same problem you have.

mollyluna said:

Yes, my mistake was that I started the sentence with the subject "It" instead of "She". It's fixed now. I have a growing list of "stupid mistakes I make" to search for each time I finish a manuscript. lol...

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But that wasn't a mistake. Whether you use "it-structures" or not is a question of style, and that is all.

Bah, humbug. Ban all green squigglies. I only pay attention to the red ones (spelling), and those need to be carefully checked. Never trust your computer. Didn't you see Terminator?

Seriously, as others pointed out, check the squigglies, but don't let the computor dictate since it's dependent on perhaps-inapplicable programming.

Use wordpad, and know your grammar!

mollyluna said:

The red squigglies are keeping the green squigglies in my document company. And there are lots of them... (mostly in dialogue, BTW)

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But I love it when my book gets to that critical mass and word gives me that great message that there are so many errors it can no longer display them all.

mollyluna said:

Really? Because it sounded better after I changed it. lol... Oh well.

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There's a difference between grammar and style. Style means choosing one grammatical variant over another. Which is what you did.