These sentences are all wrong:
- “The committee will consist of Bob, Mr. Parsons, and myself.”
- “Clearly, this person didn’t know what they were doing.”
- “If I was rich, I’d buy lots and lots of pants.”
- “ The mall Santa reported that needy, sad children “literally tear his heart out.”
Everybody duck. The “proper english” police are on the prowl.
He is wrong about all of them except for the “literally” one. Read language instinct by Steven pinker to find out why he is not only pretentious but also wrong.
I think he is correct. I would like to phone a friend to be sure. Please get Infidel on the blower.
Sorry, Malcolm, but he is correct. Common usage does not make errors correct.
I have an educational and professional background in English language and linguistics. Points 1, 3 and 4 are indeed wrong. Point 2 … well, it’s open for debate. “Traditionally” this would be incorrect, however, he misses the point. The English language is a LIVING thing. It grows, it adapts, it changes, it infects some languages, breeds with others, and in time (through social pressures) can overcome and kill competing languages … but I’m getting off my point here.
His comment that we should “pick a gender and run with it” is naive at best. Traditionally, in any situation where the gender was unknown, or where we were speaking about any person in general, the masculine form was expected to be used. However, as our society adapted and changed, and the status of women began to be elevated to a level of legal (though not always cultural) equality with men, the gender inequality of the English language needed to be addressed.
Early on, in the 1970s, it was not uncommon to use, instead of merely ‘he’, ‘he or she’ or ‘he/she’ or ‘s/he’ or various similar forms, but more recently these have come to be thought of as ‘wordy’, and the constant need to shift between ‘he or she’ and ‘she or he’ in order to maintain equality has been seen is a distraction in writing.
Therefore the RULES of English usage have adapted to allow ‘they’ to represent a singular individual where the gender is unknown, or irrelevant, or where the individual might be either gender.
i.e.: He’s wrong.
He’s correct, maybe. If the speaker did not know the gender of the person, he would be expected to phrase the sentence as “Clearly, they didn’t know what they were doing.” If the speaker did know the gender, then the sentence would read “Clearly, Crispy didn’t know what he was doing.” That what it says in my Ebonics textbook…Or what if the sentence was concerning a particular person speaking about another person or persons? We don’t know the context of the comment.
Dudes!! Like I seen that article! He could of been right or they could of been wrong. Like ya no, whatever, ya no? Too each her own partacipiticle. Its a free county!
DJ,
You’re channeling W all of a sudden, is that on purpose?
DJ dood, ur like so totally on da mny. The OP is a n00bx0r.
Actually the first one is correct. People using myself instead of me or yourself instead of you (usually in a sad attempt to sound posh) end up sounding like cider-addled idiots.
I cringe whenever a salesperson says something like “The reason I’m calling yourself today…” or “what I will do for yourself…”
DJ, I’m pinning a medal on your chest. You, sir, are going to president of the United States of America someday!
I know people quibble over what’s REALLY correct and what’s continually morphing, but I think the article makes a FANTASTIC point about the word “literally”
STOP USING IT UNLESS YOU ARE BEING LITERAL! English is filled with thousands of words, most with a plethora of synonyms that mean ALMOST the same thing but add their own flare… use one of those.
BTW – the Santa example is exactly what happens every time I hear someone use literally lightly
I know someone who complained that his girlfriend never bought him gifts like he buys her flowers. He said “why does she never buy ME flowers?” I asked him, “Literally?” and he said “YES!”
Another example of the misuse of the word ‘literally’ was when I saw a documentary on TV where the guy said he saw a UFO, and that it had ‘literally scared the crap out of him.’ Wow.