5 exercises — practise correct reflexive pronoun choice and agreement in technical descriptions.
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
Which sentence uses the reflexive pronoun correctly to describe a process that acts on itself?
"Itself" is the correct reflexive pronoun for a non-human subject (the script) whose action targets the subject itself. Option A is correct: "The script cleans up itself" (more naturally: "cleans itself up"). Option B incorrectly uses "himself", the reflexive for a singular male person, which does not apply to an inanimate subject like a script. Option C uses the plain object pronoun "it" instead of the reflexive "itself" — since the subject and object refer to the same entity, the reflexive form is required. Option D uses "oneself", the generic/impersonal reflexive, which does not agree with the specific third-person subject "the script".
2 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses a reflexive pronoun for emphasis (not as a true reflexive object)?
Emphatic reflexives add emphasis to a subject or object without being the grammatical object of the verb. Option A is correct: "I myself reviewed..." emphasizes that the speaker personally did the review (as opposed to delegating it), and "myself" sits appositively next to "I". Option B incorrectly uses "myself" as the subject of the sentence — reflexive pronouns cannot function as the grammatical subject; only a subject pronoun ("I") can. Option D similarly uses the non-standard "me myself" as a subject, which is ungrammatical in standard English. Option C is grammatical up to "myself" but then incorrectly repeats "to me", which is redundant.
3 / 5
Which sentence contains a common non-native error: overusing "myself" instead of a plain object pronoun?
Option A is the error: "send the deployment logs to myself" incorrectly uses the reflexive "myself" where the subject and object are different (the sender is not necessarily the same as the intended recipient described this way, and even when self-referential, "to me" is the standard, natural object pronoun in requests like this). This is a very common overcorrection error, often used in professional emails to sound more formal, but it is grammatically non-standard. Option B is the correct version using the plain object pronoun "me". Options C and D are correct genuine reflexive uses: the subject ("I") and object ("myself") genuinely refer to the same person performing an action on themselves (sending a reminder to oneself; burning oneself out).
4 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses a reflexive pronoun to describe an API that calls its own endpoint recursively?
"Itself" is correct for describing recursion where a function invokes the same function — the subject and object are identical. Option B is correct: "The function calls itself recursively." Option A uses the non-reflexive object pronoun "it", which would incorrectly imply the function is calling some other, separate entity referred to elsewhere. Option C wrongly applies the personal reflexive "himself" to an inanimate function. Option D ("their self") is a non-standard, ungrammatical construction — the correct singular gender-neutral reflexive for a person of unspecified gender is "themself" or "themselves", not "their self", and in any case does not apply to an inanimate function.
5 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses "themselves" for a plural or gender-neutral singular technical subject?
"Each microservice" is grammatically singular (agreement is with "each", not with the plural noun that follows), so the reflexive pronoun must also be singular: "itself". Option A is correct. Option B incorrectly pairs the singular "each microservice" with the plural reflexive "themselves" — a common agreement error. Option C reverses the error: the plural subject "the microservices" is paired with the singular reflexive "itself", which is also incorrect — it should be "themselves". Option D uses "theirselves", which is not a standard English word (the correct forms are "themselves" for a definite plural, or "themself" as an emerging singular gender-neutral form for people, not systems).