Grammar pedants - help please.
1 lurker |
97 watchers
Aug 2016
8:04pm, 21 Aug 2016
10,992 posts
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Columba
I hate the use of "them" and "their" as a singular term to substitute for him/her and his/hers.
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Aug 2016
2:03pm, 22 Aug 2016
11,383 posts
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LindsD
Me too! It's endemic in academia.
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Aug 2016
3:47pm, 22 Aug 2016
2,495 posts
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Cyclops
I often use them or their in the singular - it is so useful! Lots of people tell me off for doing it 
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Aug 2016
5:30pm, 22 Aug 2016
11,002 posts
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Columba
I can see it's useful, but would prefer it if we had a gender-free singular term. Other than "it" which won't do for people; indeed, it will barely do for dogs.
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Aug 2016
9:26am, 28 Aug 2016
13,680 posts
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ChrisHB
THEY for a generic singular goes back to Shakespeare, or so it is said. I dislike it, and i wonder why. Of course, it doesn't happen in Latin. Maybe that's why.
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Aug 2016
7:41pm, 28 Aug 2016
11,064 posts
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Columba
Shakespeare? Can anyone provide an example? |
Aug 2016
7:50pm, 28 Aug 2016
2,044 posts
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Drell
itre.cis.upenn.edu for Shakespeare pemberley.com for Jane Austen As the latter link points out, it was also used by: Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, the King James Bible, The Spectator, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Frances Sheridan, Oliver Goldsmith, Henry Fielding, Maria Edgeworth, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, William Makepeace Thackeray, Sir Walter Scott, George Eliot [Mary Anne Evans], Charles Dickens, Mrs. Gaskell, Anthony Trollope, John Ruskin, Robert Louis Stevenson, Walt Whitman, George Bernard Shaw, Lewis Carroll, Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton, W. H. Auden, Lord Dunsany, George Orwell, and C. S. Lewis. I like it and use it, though not usually when referring to a specific person of known sex. |
Aug 2016
7:39am, 29 Aug 2016
4,620 posts
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Winded
Interesting links. I'm not saying Shakespeare didn't use they in that way but the example in the link is a bit odd. "There's not a man I meet but doth salute me As if I were their well-acquainted friend" The suggestion is that "not a man I meet" is singular - that's a bit of a stretch, a bit like saying the word "everyone" is sungular. Similarly the writer suggests "it uses they despite the fact that the sex of the antecedent's referent (male) is known!" This is more a misunderstanding of "not a man I meet" (clearly not male but referring to both sexes) than a usage of "they" as a generic singular. There is an irony there; as well as an example of straw grasping if ever I saw one. |
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Aug 2016
8:37am, 29 Aug 2016
11,070 posts
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Columba
Thank you, Winded. I was feeling my way in the same direction but hadn't worked out how to express it. Pemberton notwithstanding, I shall continue to say "he or she" (or, if writing, "s/he") in preference to "they". |
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Aug 2016
8:40am, 29 Aug 2016
11,071 posts
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Columba
Pemberley, not Pemberton. (Autocorrect is suggesting "pemmican"). |
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