I can’t find it in S & W. I’m still vaguely pawing through books looking for cites on why I think I’m right ;). I have to commend your grace in sharing that cite BTW.
Everyone is a plural pronoun but the shares are singular, so I still think that the pronoun should also be singular so as to agree.
I totally agree that I should have an unlimited budget and be able to buy whatever books take my fancy but this very morning Mr Primaflora and I engaged in a vigorous debate over whether or not it is necessary for me to possess several books on grammar. His opinion is that there is one right way to do anything in English grammar. ::sigh::
Okay, okay, so that’s grammatically incorrect, assuming ‘they’ in this case is plural. However, I must disagree with S&W on one particular point. Just a minor note that because of equality movements in the last century, using ‘his’ in this sort of sentence can be sexist if not everyone is male. His/her is too awkward, as is ‘his or her’, though to a lesser extent. Modern thought (and no, no cite available, and I’m too preoccupied to look for one at the moment) generally advocates the use of ‘they’ as a singular pronoun indicating indeterminate gender. EoS is a fantastic book, but it was written in 1918, and some things have changed since then.
I’m only going off what I’ve learned and can’t provide documentation at the moment, I’m afraid. And since this definitely ain’t contributing to the OP, I’ll shut up while the shuttin’s good, and buzz off.
I wasn’t going to go near the his/her thing! I do agree with you though that ‘they’ is generally considered to be of indeterminate gender and to be honest I probably would use ‘their’ in preference to his or her in that sentence. Even though I think it is technically wrong, I would be more inclined to be PC than be sexist.
The Elements of Nonsexist Usage recommends rewriting the sentence completely so as to avoid the pronoun problem.
Yeah, but that’s such a pain! Especially in cases where the only ways to rewrite the sentence just make it more awkward. Not in this case, admittedly. ‘Everybody has taken a fair share of ice cream.’ Badabing, badaboom.
::whisper:: the Elements of Nonsexist Usage even suggests the use of the passive voice to avoid pronoun problems.
I think Strunk and White would faint or spin in their graves…
Returning finally to the op before I get killed - my dictionary gives cite as a verb with citation as the noun. Interesting because I would have been perfectly comfortable with cite as a noun. I’ll bet you that cite will be a noun in the near future
When I saw this thread title, I knew exactly what you had to say, and I just wanted to drop in and applaud.
Whenever I see people using “sight” for “site” or “you’re” for “your” or even “it’s” for “its,” I figure their brains must work differently from mine. I can’t hear, say, or even think a word without thinking of the way it’s spelled. So a homophone, being spelled differently, is a whole nother word, and it looks completely out of place if it’s not the word you mean. But if words are stored in your memory by sound instead of spelling, I can see how mistakes like this would be easier to make.
Please, folks; let’s use “whoever” and “whomever” correctly.
is incorrect.
Yes, “photographed” is a verb and yes it does have an object. “Whomever” is not the object, “whoever crossed the stage” is the object. The entire clause is the object. The clause, though, has a subject - “whoever.”
The following sentence is incorrect.
Only you can do something to or for yourself. Nobody else can do something for yourself. On the other hand, they can do something for you. Thus, the correct sentence follows.
The following is incorrect.
The correct sentence shows the 1st Person Singular Pronoun in the objective case.
I agree with your conclusion (per S&W) but disagree with your reasoning. The possessive pronoun is substituting for the plural pronoun “everyone” (or everybody). It takes the singular pronoun as a distributed expression, not in order to agree with “shares”. Share(s), in fact, will take its case from the pronoun.
I have taken my fair share of ice cream.
We have taken our fair shares of ice cream.
Everybody has taken his fair share of ice cream.
They have take their fair shares of ice cream.
The above assumes that the shares of ice cream are actually alloted on an individual basis. If a group of people were actually given a single allotment then “share” would not adjust case.
AARGH! My former boss LOVED the word “myself” (being a pompous twit and all). I once saw a letter he had written to a job applicant:
AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHGGGRKKKK!!! What the hell is wrong with “Eric and I . . .”? It’s not pompous enough, that’s what.
And yes, kiddies, as Monty says, sometimes it actually IS OK to say “my date and me,” your fifth-grade English teacher’s daily beatings notwithstanding.
Primaflora, The Little, Brown Handbook is worth every cent you will spend on it. Besides, you can never have too many grammar books!
And since I have it right here, I’ll report that according to L, B, “everybody” is singular and takes a third-person singular verb; and when serving as an antecedent to another pronoun, that pronoun is singular. While people often say, “Everybody has taken their share of ice cream,” it is technically incorrect. One way around this is to rewrite the sentence. (If you prefer it the “wrong” way anyway, most people - aside from us obsessive types - probably wouldn’t even notice.)
Source: The L, B Handbook, Fifth Edition, pp. 256-257 and 755.
Yes, I know that is not the proper way to cite a source. What’s really scary is that I knew off the top of my head which pages referred to this rule. :eek:
Ok, so this is a little off topic, in that it isn’t nitpicking phrases, but… how on earth can people justify incredibly stupid grammatical mistakes? I’m the copy editor of my school’s paper, and you’d think these idiots were in elementary school, not college! I mean, a couple little mistakes, okay. But the friggin editors can’t even spell Letter’s to the Editor… that is so inexcusable, and to stick it in behind my back because they were running behind… but it’s MY name on the friggin copyeditor slot… these people even have SPELLCHECK and they can’t get any basic words right… and then they try to be witty and use words like Real Politic and SPELL IT LIKE THAT! I should just let them. Not to mention the other atrocities I’ve witnessed. I hope to God they fail miserably in real life… how on earth do they ever pass classes where they have to write papers for grades… If I were a prof I would just drop a point off every time they used excessive apostrophization (especially in it’s) or didn’t bother to check the spelling of ‘detant’ or other foreign words. They’re in the friggin dictionary. And then they have the nerve to friggin look down on me because I’m an underclassman… Grr.
I’ve had two people work for me who thought the correct way to use the spell check was to hit the “add to dictionary” button whenever the spell check encountered a word they’d misspelled. They didn’t like working for me after I caught them doing that.
Look up cite at http://www.m-w.com.* It says that cite is a transitive verb that’s been around since the 15th century. Among the definitions:
I think that’s what people mean when they say. “Cite, please?”
*BTW: Someone explain to me why I ALWAYS have to reload m-w.com? ALWAYS, the site appears for a split-second, and then it disappears and I have to hit “Reload” to get it back. WHY? For the love of humanity, why???
