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GrammarTalk 22 - 23 May 2008 - Main.BarbPitman
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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?" | | | But I am obviously a little unbalanced when it comes to grammar.
-- AmandaRichardson - 22 May 2008 | |
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Amanda, Thanks for the Ayn Rand and God example (it provided me with both a good laugh and argumentative ammunition). My husband and I have had a running dialogue for years about whether that comma should be left in or taken out (I'm the traditionalist, he's the "why bother with the extra keystroke" pragmatist.) Now I've got new ammunition to convince him with humor of the validity of my point (the most effective ammunition, in my opinion). Thanks -- hope you have a great summer.
-- BarbPitman - 23 May 2008 | | | |
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GrammarTalk 21 - 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?" | | | Last point: I share Claire’s worry. I last studied grammar in the 6th grade (in a French school. Egad!). I am a little insecure about my grammar. Should I read Strunk and White this summer? Is there a better source?
-- ThaliaJulme - 22 May 2008 | |
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The classic example of the need for the Oxford comma is this book dedication: "To my parents, Ayn Rand and God." There it looks like the author's parents are Ayn Rand and God, when this was clearly not the intention of the author.
On the other hand, it can introduce ambiguity as well. Honestly, I don't like eliminating it because dropping the comma was an invention of the newspaper business to save space and I am apparently both a prescriptivist and against saving paper. It just seems so brusque and unnecessary to clip the comma and for some reason it gets under my skin.
But I am obviously a little unbalanced when it comes to grammar.
-- AmandaRichardson - 22 May 2008 | | |
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GrammarTalk 20 - 22 May 2008 - Main.ThaliaJulme
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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?" | | | 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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I should preface this comment by stating that I am in the alternate between “he” and “she” camp. I am also pretty sure that I use “she” when my referent is doing something positive (like doctoring) and “he” when my referent is say, killing someone. Surely this is silly, but it beats using “their” as a singular.
I agree with Amanda. I do not think plainness (or avoiding distraction) should be the goal of writing, even legal writing. While lyricism should not be the goal in legal writing, I do not think it should be avoided. I do not think we should get to law school and turn off the creative portion of our brain. I think there is some room for beautiful memo writing, and there is certainly room for lyricism in more academic writing.
As for the Oxford comma thing, I don’t even understand why some people are so enraged by the Associated Press Style. (NYT does not use Oxford comma) Is there a history behind this? I use the Oxford comma most of the time, but a missing comma does not send me into a rage tailspin. I don’t understand the investment.
Last point: I share Claire’s worry. I last studied grammar in the 6th grade (in a French school. Egad!). I am a little insecure about my grammar. Should I read Strunk and White this summer? Is there a better source?
-- ThaliaJulme - 22 May 2008 | | | |
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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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GrammarTalk 18 - 21 May 2008 - Main.AndrewGradman
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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?" | | | A father and his daughter get into a terrible car accident. They are taken to separate rooms of the hospital. The doctor in charge of the girl looks at her and says, "I can't operate. She's my daughter." Still surprised?
Michael:
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< | If the gender of the pronoun "my" followed the gender of the words "she-daughter"/"he-son" surrounding it, then your example cannot help us know whether people assume a default male gender in general. That means that if we experiment with the terms of your story -- sometimes substituting "daughter" for "son", and at other times replacing "physician" with "secretary," "ballet dancer," "teacher," or "nurse" -- the "daughter" substitution should best alleviate reader confusion about the ambiguously gendered character's gender. In which case, the outrage feminists feel when readers "default" the physician to male is really just an artifact of the author's choice to make the ambiguously-gendered, but male-associated, "my" refer unambiguously to a physician. | >
> | If the gender of the pronoun "my" followed the gender of the words "she-daughter"/"he-son" surrounding it, then your example cannot help us know whether people assume a default male gender in general. That means that if we experiment with the terms of your story -- sometimes substituting "daughter" for "son", and at other times replacing "doctor" with "secretary," "ballet dancer," "teacher," or "nurse" -- the "daughter" substitution should best alleviate reader confusion about the ambiguously gendered character's gender. In which case, the outrage feminists feel when readers "default" the doctor to male is really just an artifact of the author's choice to make the male-biased "my" refer unambiguously to a doctor. | | | -- AndrewGradman - 20 May 2008 | | |
Andrew, I'm not sure I understand the takeaway, but I do appreciate the point about various occupations and characteristics being gendered one way or the other, not all of them male. But I submit that many occupations which are currently split 50-50 by gender in real life (college students, for example, where females make up slightly more than 50% of the pool) retain a default male connotation. So, the sentence "The college student did his taxes on time" is easier to process than "The college student did her taxes on time." Now, of course, this is nothing more than my intuition. However, it could be tested experimentally, and I suspect that one would be able to show that cognitive processing of the first version is easier than the second. If true, this would be an interesting result, given that America today is roughly equally split between male and female college students. | |
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- If you thought I was making a point about the gendering of occupations, then one of us has much worse language problems than number agreement. My point was that the reason people assume the doctor is male is because her child is male ("he's my son"), NOT because she is a doctor, or because her gender is left unstated. So what does your story tell us about bias? -- AndrewGradman - 21 May 2008
| | | -- MichaelBerkovits - 20 May 2008 |
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