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GrammarTalk 19 - 22 May 2008 - Main.AmandaRichardson
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Eben made many corrections on students' papers involving number-agreement. For example, "Why does everyone ignore their passions?," as opposed to, say, "Why does everyone ignore (his) / (her) / (his or her) passions?" | | | The study also found that in sentences like "Anybody who litters should be fined $50, even if he/she/they cannot see a trashcan nearby..." the singular they is actually the pronoun that leads to fastest reading times. Again, I would imagine that the same result would not hold for people very attuned to prescriptive grammar; but it is worth noting that the test subjects here were university students, not street rabble.
-- MichaelBerkovits - 21 May 2008 | |
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I'm not sure I understand this proposition that the goal is writing that is not distracting. Sure, writing shouldn't distract readers in certain ways (as when something blatantly ungrammatical jars one out of the meaning of the text and into criticism of the author), but linguistic choices, and encouraging a reader to think more deeply about them, can be as important as the meaning of a text. And if we accept as a given that using "he" as a default is sexist, then perhaps alternating "he" and "she," especially in cases where the referent is not the matching stereotype, furthers the cause of gender equality, or whatever it is that people are interested in when they take issue with "he" as a gender neutral singular pronoun.
I certainly find "they" as a singular jarring in a "judging the writer's grasp of grammar" way, and "she" occasionally jarring in a "challenging my assumptions about gender" way. The two do not seem equivalent to me.
And mightn't faster reading be the very opposite of what legal writing should be about?
-- AmandaRichardson - 22 May 2008
And while I'm posting, I just want to say "Go Oxford comma!" because I'm not sure there's another place where I could even hope anyone would care.
-- AmandaRichardson - 22 May 2008 | | | |
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