State

It says under my byline "Second Team Getting Their First Start.

Grammatically this is probably incorrect. The omitted subject is almost certainly "Second Team [Player]." It should then read "Getting His First Start."

I find this failure to have agreement between the singular subject and its corresponding pronoun all the time. I think it's an effort to be gender neutral or non-sexist with the language.

Total b.s. It's not sexist to say the following, for example: "Everyone open his notebook." I usually throw in "his or her," but that gets cumbersome quickly.

Why have feminists ruined the language? People who love it and think it should be above politics want to know.

Titus Pullo

[/facepalm]

dude, seriously? my gawd.... who gives a ****?

how do you dress yourself in the morning when your mind is so utterly consumed with irrelevancy?

are you honestly trying to loosely claim that feminism has altered Ian's site's language?

i mean, i get that almost no one likes you here, so you have to play a role... but this is just so bad.

chicowalker

Yeah, half the populace doesn't know proper grammar or spelling, but it must be feminists who have "ruined the language."

(Why do you even care? Isn't proper grammar the kind of thing your party now derides as elitist?)

Mrs.PatsFanInVa

If you are addressing a group of people why wouldn't you say, "Everyone open your notebook?"


Gosh...sorry. Damn women - they ruin everything, don't they?

Mrs.PatsFanInVa

That would work fine - if everyone here were male.

They are not.

It would look kinda silly if, under my byline, it said, "Experienced Starter w/his First Big Contract," wouldn't it?

Face it. Like it or not, you share the world with women. Concessions must be made.

People who believe in equality make them.

Titus Pullo

Well, duh! If they'd stay in the kitchen where they belong, they wouldn't be trying to change my words!

chicowalker

or her notebook

Mrs.PatsFanInVa

or their notebook.

State

Subject-verb agreement is very much fair game on the SAT. It's part and parcel of standard English.

Here, take a look for yourself: Subject-Verb Agreement

And the neuter for English has traditionally been the masculine.

The denial of that is simply re-writing grammar. Everyone understand--or is it understands?--this is politics trumping the language. Manhole cover is now personhole cover?

What confuses people is the indefinite pronoun, which also causes problems in the possessive case, since most of 'em take a singular verb. After years of education I would think one would get it.

But don't get me started on it's/its. That's a mind field like lie/lay. Whose boots are lying on the floor? Yesterday I lay on the hammock reading the new Dean Koontz Frankenstein novel.

chicowalker

Is anybody denying that subject-verb agreement isn't fair game?

otoh, your claim that any deviation from tradition is "re-writing grammar" is incorrect. Using "her" instead of "his" wasn't incorrect, it just wasn't common. So while a language like Spanish has words that are masculine or feminine, and deviation is in fact incorrect, that's not the case with English.

Furthermore, the English language constantly changes, as much as that must pain somebody like you. It's also a pretty quirky language. So saying "her book" instead of "his book" is perfectly acceptable.


I don't know anybody who has used or advocated the use of the term "personhole cover." You do?


I've never understood the confusion on its/it's. (I do understand typos -- but I don't know how one would be confused on proper usage.)