I was curious what Eben and others had to say about this construction. Unlike a mere typo, this construction comes out in people's papers because it's common in colloquial speech. But more than that, I would say that it has now achieved a status of sounding correct to native American English ears. And I would even go so far as to say that it is close to having achieved a "correct" status in written English prose, if it is not there already. Eben clearly disagrees with this proposition. My questions are:

1) Is the construction "wrong" in formal writing?

2) If it is "wrong," is it close (say, a decade or two away) from being right, as a result of natural evolutionary tendencies in language?

3) As lawyers, or even as professionals in general, are we well-advised to write conservatively, with traditional rules of grammar ("up with which I will not put"), or will it be considered sloppy (and make us seem illiterate, as Eben says) to push some of these rules toward what seems to be their natural dissolution, in our own writing? -- MichaelBerkovits - 19 May 2008

I cannot speak for Eben, but personally think that he is generally right. Even if the construction is not "wrong" in colloquial English, it is distracting for the more conservative readers. Put it this way - you could write with informal solecisms and put off half your readers, or you could write with elegant style and "conservative" grammatical constructions and not put off any readers.

Writing almost always lags behind oral linguistic innovations. Natural evolutionary tendencies in language are sometimes slow and other times rapid, as well as sometimes random and other times deliberate. I wonder whether the "everyone" and "their" construction is a result of the gender faux pas in using "him" as the default singular neuter pronoun. We have the neuter subject pronoun "one" but no corresponding neuter direct object pronoun. That asymmetry may explain the recent outburst of confusing our grammatical numbers to keep our genders neutral.

It seemed evident to me that Eben's critical generalizations of a writer's literacy in response to a grammatical error were intentionally exaggerated. The harsher the criticism, the more scrutiny in the revision and future drafts. That said, I think it would be sloppy because any writer must keep his audience in mind when composing a written piece. If your reader is a judge, write for a judge; if a reader of McSweeney? 's, then strap on your literary flare.

-- JesseCreed - 19 May 2008

As you pointed out, Jesse, a major reason for this sort of number-disagreement in educated writing is the reticence to use the word "he" or "him" as the neuter (in order to avoid sexism), coupled with the terrible awkwardness of "he or she" or "him or her." You also correctly point out that some readers, perhaps many, are put off and "distracted" by number-disagreement.

However, I want to point out that one accepted solution to the "male pronoun as the neuter" is to use the female pronoun instead. For example, "When a judge writes an opinion, she..." But this solution, which is both anti-sexist and acceptable to "conservative" readers, actually makes for distracting reading for many people. When I'm reading along and come across sentences like those, it's momentarily unsettling - because it disrupts the default mental state of assuming that anyone mentioned in prose who is not obviously female is male. The fact that this is the default mental state for me is unfortunate, and is indicative of our sexist cultural past (and, hopefully to a lesser extent, present). But I know it's like that for many other people too; otherwise the following children's riddle wouldn't work:

A father and his son get into a terrible car accident. They are taken to separate rooms of the hospital. The doctor in charge of the boy looks at him and says, "I can't operate. He's my son." How is this possible? Answer: The doctor is the boy's mother.

My point is that there are problems with all of the possibilities for the neuter. The male neuter is sexist; using the female neuter or switching between the male and female neuter can be confusing and distracting; saying "he or she" is awkward; and using "they" or "their" causes number-disagreement.

I happen to alternate between the male and female neuter in my own writing, because I understand that number-disagreement is unacceptable to many readers, including most of the important ones (e.g., judges, lawyers, professors). But I'm trying to suggest not that we should have number-disagreement in our writing (because that's distracting), but rather that the pronoun "they" is steadily gaining a secondary grammatical identity in which its grammatical number is one, in constructions like those we've been discussing. Writing lags behind oral linguistic innovation, as you say, but in this case the oral innovation happened long ago and my impression is that it is close to becoming acceptable in writing, as well. This is what I was soliciting agreement or disagreement on (to appropriately end this post with a sentence ending in a preposition).

-- MichaelBerkovits - 19 May 2008

I hope your prediction turns out to be correct, Mike, and "their" and "they" take on second meanings as singular gender-neutral pronouns. While I know it is incorrect to use "their" or "they" as singular pronouns in formal writing (and I do try to catch myself, though often unsuccessfully) in casual writing and speech I use them that way all the time. It definitely sounds awkward to me to use "one," "someone" or "a person" and then get stuck with the "he or she." I also tend to use "she" as a neuter or flip back and forth between "he" and "she," but I agree that it reads a bit unnaturally as well.

As a sidenote, in trying to write this post my shaky grasp of grammatical rules has become painfully clear. It's interesting (and disconcerting) that I've learned the grammatical rules of the other languages I've studied, but always just played it by ear in English.

-- ClaireOSullivan - 19 May 2008