Emphatic Reflexive Pronouns

Emphatic reflexive pronouns add the meaning "personally", "in person", or "without help". They use the same forms as ordinary reflexive pronouns: myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, and themselves. Here, the reflexive does not usually receive the action. Instead, it highlights who did something or who was directly involved.

The emphatic word can come after the noun or pronoun, as in The mayor herself opened the library, or near the end of the sentence, as in I baked this cake myself. If you remove the emphatic reflexive, the sentence still works, but it loses emphasis. The sentences include people doing tasks personally, seeing things for themselves, and surprising cases such as Even the teacher himself could not solve it. Always match the emphatic reflexive to the person or thing being emphasised. Position changes emphasis, not agreement, so form matching still matters. That is why the children themselves and the company itself use different forms.