Reflexive Pronouns Are Simpler Than You Think Until You Don't
When you write about yourself or someone else, you use reflexive pronouns. Most people know myself, yourself, and themselves. The problem starts when you get into specific pronouns and their forms. Himself is correct standard English. Hisself is not. This comes up more often than you would expect in editing jobs and community moderation. People argue about it online constantly, and nobody wins anything. It is what it is.
The Grammar Duel Himself Vs Hisself Setting The Record Straight On Reflexive Pronouns
Reflexive pronouns have a simple function in any sentence: they indicate that the subject and the object are the same entity. The verb reflects back onto itself grammatically. That is all they do. They are not fancy. They are not poetic. They exist to prevent ambiguity when the actor and receiver match. Here is the full set and how they work in practice: I myself did it (reflexive emphasis on first person singular)
You hurt yourself (reflexive object on second person singular or plural) He hurt himself (reflexive object on third person masculine singular) She hurt herself (reflexive object on third person feminine singular)
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It hurt itself (reflexive object on third person neuter singular) We hurt ourselves (reflexive object on first person plural) They hurt themselves (reflexive object on third person plural)
Himself functions as a reflexive pronoun when the subject is he or him. The form itself combines the object pronoun him with the intensifier self. There is no grammatical reason to change it to hisself because the possessive determiner his already serves a different syntactic purpose in the language entirely. Mixing the two creates a form that standard grammar simply does not recognize.
Where Hisself Actually Comes From
Hisself exists as a dialectal form. It appears in certain regional varieties of English, particularly in parts of the American South and Appalachia. You will hear it spoken. You might encounter it in fiction writing meant to represent those dialects accurately. It does not belong in formal writing, academic papers, or professional correspondence. I dealt with this directly while editing a collection of personal essays a few years back. One writer had used hisself throughout a memoir about growing up in rural Kentucky. The author's voice was genuine and the content was strong. The issue was that the submission was going to a literary magazine that adhered to standard American English conventions. I flagged each instance and explained to the author that hisself would be marked as nonstandard in that context. The author understood immediately and switched to himself throughout. The piece was accepted later that year. This happens all the time. Writers sometimes test what happens when they keep dialectal forms in formal settings, and the result is usually rejection or an editorial request to change it.
The Intensive Pronoun Complication
Reflexive pronouns also function as intensive pronouns when they add emphasis rather than serve as objects. The form is identical but the syntactic role changes completely. This is where most people trip up because the distinction is purely grammatical, not phonological. Compare these two sentences carefully: The mayor himself signed the documents (intensive: emphasizing that the mayor did it personally)
The mayor signed the documents himself (also intensive, emphasizing the same thing but with a different placement) In both cases himself is grammatically intensive rather than reflexive. You can remove it from either sentence and the core meaning remains intact. With reflexive pronouns, removing them breaks the sentence or changes its meaning entirely. The doctor prescribed the medication to herself (reflexive: the doctor gave the medication to the doctor. Removing herself changes who received the medication).
This distinction matters because it affects how editors and readers process your writing. An intensive pronoun positioned right after its noun functions as a clear emphatic marker. A reflexive pronoun positioned as an object completes the transitive relationship of the verb. Both use the same word but they operate differently inside the sentence structure.
Common Mistakes That Have Nothing to Do With Hisself
Most grammar mistakes with reflexive pronouns come from other patterns that people get wrong regularly. Hisself is only one small issue in a much larger category. Using reflexive pronouns where object pronouns belong: Me and himself went to the store. This is incorrect because himself appears in a subject position where he belongs. Reflexive pronouns should never function as subjects in standard English. Overusing reflexive pronouns unnecessarily: I bought myself a new coat versus I bought a new coat. Both are grammatically acceptable but the second is more concise and preferred in most formal writing. The reflexive form becomes redundant when there is no ambiguity about who received the object.
Mismatching reflexive pronouns with their subjects: John and myself finished the project. Again, myself cannot serve as a subject. It should be John and I. This mistake is extremely common because people were taught that using myself sounds more polite, which is a myth that persisted for decades without any grammatical basis. These errors appear far more frequently than hisself in any professional writing environment. Fixing them gives you more return on your editing time than worrying about dialectal variants.
Advanced Nuance: Themselves and Singular Usage
The reflexive pronoun themselves has undergone a notable shift in recent decades. Singular they is now widely accepted in standard English, which means themselves can legitimately function as a singular reflexive pronoun. This was debated heavily in style guide discussions and the consensus across major references has shifted accordingly. A person who prefers singular they should use themselves, not themself, in formal writing. Themself persists as a nonstandard dialectal form similar to hisself. It carries the same social marking. If you see themself in published work outside of dialect fiction, it is almost certainly a mistake rather than a deliberate stylistic choice. I noticed this pattern shift while working on a style guide update for a regional newspaper. The previous edition had consistently used themself for singular antecedents, following an older convention. Several writers pushed back on that choice during the revision process. The updated style guide now specifies themselves for all singular reflexive uses with they/them pronouns. The change was not instantaneous across the entire newsroom. Some staff members continued using themself for months afterward despite the new standard. Human resistance to changing written habits is a predictable variable in any editorial environment.
When Reflexive Pronouns Become Unnecessary
Not every sentence needs a reflexive pronoun even when the subject and object conceptually overlap. English allows many constructions where the reflexive form is implied without being stated. Overusing them makes writing feel padded and repetitive. Consider these pairs: She introduced herself to the team (necessary reflexive)
She introduced the new policy to everyone (no reflexive needed because the objects differ) He blamed himself for the delay (necessary reflexive because he and the object are identical) He blamed the delay on bad weather (no reflexive needed because the object is the delay, not he)
The key question is always whether the subject and the target of the action are the same entity. If they are, you need the reflexive. If they are not, you do not. This rule applies regardless of whether you are dealing with himself, themselves, or any other form in the set.
A Practical Checklist for Editing Reflexive Pronouns
When you review text for reflexive pronoun usage, run through this sequence quickly. It takes about thirty seconds per page and catches the vast majority of errors. First identify the subject of each clause. Then find the object or object position. Determine whether they reference the same entity. If they do, verify that the correct reflexive pronoun is used. Check for intensive pronouns that can be removed without changing the core meaning. Flag any nonstandard forms like hisself or themself. Finally verify that reflexive pronouns appear in object positions and never in subject positions. This process works consistently across different types of documents. I have used it on technical manuals, creative nonfiction, legal briefs, and casual blog posts with equal effectiveness. The steps do not change based on genre. The pronoun rules are the same everywhere, even though style preferences around conciseness vary between formal and informal contexts.
The Social Weight of Prescriptive Choices
Grammar enforcement carries social consequences that pure linguistics often overlooks. Using hisself instead of himself marks a speaker as belonging to a particular dialect community. That marking is not inherently negative within that community. It becomes problematic primarily when the context demands standard written English and the nonstandard form signals a lack of familiarity with those conventions rather than a deliberate dialectal choice. Writing instructors and editors sometimes fail to distinguish between ignorance of the standard form and intentional dialectal expression. The latter belongs in fiction and dialogue representation. The former belongs in remedial grammar review. Telling the difference requires reading beyond the single pronoun and looking at the broader patterns in the text. A single hisself might be a typo or a lapse. A paragraph full of them suggests consistent dialectal patterning throughout the writing sample. The reverse situation exists as well. Some writers overcorrect and avoid reflexive pronouns entirely, producing awkward sentences that sacrifice clarity for an imagined formality. Neither extreme serves the reader well. The middle ground is using the correct reflexive pronoun in the correct position without overthinking it or underusing it to the point of grammatical error.
