{"id":224,"date":"2005-03-14T20:59:36","date_gmt":"2005-03-14T20:59:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/uncategorized\/language_police\/"},"modified":"2005-03-14T20:59:36","modified_gmt":"2005-03-14T20:59:36","slug":"language_police","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/language\/language_police\/","title":{"rendered":"Language Police, Episode I"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Call me a fogey. Call me a prescriptivist. Call me a pompous prick. But I still routinely flinch at the use of plural pronouns to signify gender-neutrality where singular pronouns are required. (&quot;If you have a friend in trouble you should help <em>them<\/em>.&quot;) The correct generic pronouns are <em>he<\/em> and <em>him.<\/em> (I learned this lesson long ago from a female English teacher.) If you are uncomfortable with the practice, you can use the more awkward <em>he\/she <\/em>and <em>him\/her,<\/em> or simply alternate genders. But I think most people use <em>they<\/em> and <em>them<\/em> not for aesthetic or political reasons but out of laziness. Ok, in casual speech I can understand it. I do it sometimes too. <\/p>\n<p>But if the gender is explicitly specified, I cannot tolerate it. Example from a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.steakandbjday.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">website<\/a> I encountered recently:<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Every Valentines day you rack your brains for that one special, unique gift that will show your wife or girlfriend [singular, feminine] that you really do care for them [ouch] more than any other.&quot;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Update:<\/span> In multiple posts, the linguists at Language Log have argued the case that singular <em>they<\/em> is grammatically correct. In <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/itre.cis.upenn.edu\/~myl\/languagelog\/archives\/002748.html\">this post<\/a> they cite Shakespeare as precedent and call me a &quot;particularly puristic pusillanimous pontificator&quot; (but not a pompous prick.)<\/p>\n<p>For more on the subject, go <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.editorscanberra.org\/they.htm\">here<\/a> and <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.crossmyt.com\/hc\/linghebr\/austheir.html\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Call me a fogey. Call me a prescriptivist. Call me a pompous prick. But I still routinely flinch at the use of plural pronouns to signify gender-neutrality where singular pronouns are required. (&quot;If you have a friend in trouble you should help them.&quot;) The correct generic pronouns are he and him. (I learned this lesson [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language","category-peeves"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}