6 ms·
Great post, but minor quibble: The CEO of that company, the "next Steve Jobs," might not measure up to Steve Jobs. But he wouldn't have to. He'd just have to d
by jamesrcole 15y ago
Great post, but minor quibble:
The CEO of that company, the "next Steve Jobs," might not measure up to Steve Jobs. But he wouldn't have to. He'd just have to do a better job than Samsung and HP and Nokia, and that seems pretty doable.
That really should be:
The CEO of that company, the "next Steve Jobs," might not measure up to Steve Jobs. But they wouldn't have to. They'd just have to do a better job than Samsung and HP and Nokia, and that seems pretty doable.
- gbog 15y agoHell, thanks, you just pointed out that pg is not PC. Hope he will never start writing in this silly new grammar.
- jamesrcole 15y agoI don't find 'they' any less readable than using 'he' or using 'she'.
- hythloday 15y agoWhether you find "they" as a third person singular pronoun objectionable, it's not "new"--it goes back to at least Shakespeare (through Austen).
- gbog 15y agoI object to: - the idea that changing grammar is a way to fix moral problems. - any barrier, taboo, or artificial distance between what one think and what one write.
- jarek 15y agoI agree - we should get more people to think in singular they, rather than just write.
- jamesrcole 15y agoI wasn't talking about the grammar in what was written, I was talking about the content which implied that the person would be male. any barrier, taboo, or artificial distance between what one think and what one write. How was this case -- implying the person would be male, vs being gender neutral -- a barrier between what one is thinking and what one is writing?
- gruseom 15y agoI agree that nitpicking is unhelpful, but you're wrong about singular they. It goes back at least to Chaucer and is as English as can be. Shakespeare used it ("God send every one their heart's desire") and Jane Austen way used it (http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/austhlis.html http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/austhlis.html). No one can accuse Austen of "silly new grammar". The point is that all the good writers have used it forever. That includes Byron ("Nobody here seems to look into an Author, ancient or modern, if they can avoid it") and Wilde ("Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes") and, as Geoff Pullum wonderfully discovered, E.B. White: http://books.google.com/books?id=aqe9RoZorLIC&lpg=PA109&dq=%22didnt%20they%22%20intitle%3A%22charlottes%20web%22&pg=PA109#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=aqe9RoZorLIC&lpg=PA109&... The kicker is that the real PC silliness turns out to have been generic he, which was imposed 200 years ago by grammarians who wanted to make English more proper and Latin-like. It never fully took, and now it's fading as social norms shift. If those meddling ideologues had left well enough alone in the first place, we wouldn't be having tedious pronoun battles today. Given the history, though, it's pretty clear that English is slowly reverting to what the real masters have been doing all along. Sounds fine to me.