The president-elect made a grammatical error in the opening statement of his first press conference. “This morning we woke up to more sobering news about the state of our economy,” he said. “The 240,000 jobs lost in October marks the 10^th consecutive month that our economy has shed jobs.”

The problem? A plural subject — in this case, jobs — requires a plural verb — mark, not marks.

It should be no surprise that Obama also got into grammatical trouble when he talked about his budding relationship with President Bush.

“I’m sure that in addition to taking a tour of the White House, there is going to be a substantive conversation between myself and the president,” Obama said.

First off, whenever you’re talking about multiple people, the speaker should be listed last. It’s one of those examples where etiquette and grammar intersect.

Second, how to describe the speaker. I doesn’t work because we’re using these two people as objects. The conversation will be between them. (So Jessica Simpson’s song “Between You and I” is grammatically incorrect.)

By myself is a reflexive pronoun. It only works when you are the object of an action AND the subject of the same sentence. I see myself in the mirror. I treated myself to a manicure.

Obama’s use of myself suggests he may be experiencing an out-of-body sensation as president-elect — or that a bit of ego may be surfacing. Either way, we advise him to keep some distance from W. in the coming weeks.