# "These ones" - Proper English or not? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 14, 2013, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-ones-proper-english-or-not/666226 "2013-08-14T16:49:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2013, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-ones-proper-english-or-not/666226/21 "2013-08-14T21:28:21Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Yikes–I just realized that came out really snarky. Pfft. No apology necessary. It seems to follow from your argument, though, that we could do anything if it weren’t for a defendable reason. We could make any irregular verb regular, for instance. Some rules of grammar can’t be defended in terms of logic, but they’re still good rules. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2013, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-ones-proper-english-or-not/666226/22 "2013-08-14T21:42:43Z")
> [@Learjeff](#): > > These are what some folks would call “distinctive of class,” which is a polite way of saying “It makes you sound like trailer trash.” That is, if there is a polite way to say that. Nah. It’s just dialect. I say “where you at?” all the time (and not in the New Orleans sense of “how are you” but rather the sense of “where are you?”) Pretty sure I’m well-educated and don’t fit under the category of “trailer trash.” And I also sometimes will use “come with” for “come along.” That’s just the way we Chicago folk (and probably throughout the Midwest) talk. I’m sure I’ve used “these ones” in my speech, as well. I’m really surprised to find that this construction is so objectionable to people. Language is a funny thing. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2013, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-ones-proper-english-or-not/666226/23 "2013-08-14T21:43:54Z")
> [@bup](#): > > Pfft. No apology necessary. > > It seems to follow from your argument, though, that we could do anything if it weren’t for a defendable reason. We could make any irregular verb regular, for instance. > > Some rules of grammar can’t be defended in terms of logic, but they’re still good rules. OK, I’ll bite. **WHY** is it a good rule? Why is “this one” okay, but “these ones” not? If you object to the latter as being redundant, I don’t see how you can’t object to the former. ---
**Author:** ![Apollyon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/apollyon/32/4238_2.png) [@Apollyon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apollyon)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-ones-proper-english-or-not/666226/24 "2013-08-15T00:20:48Z")
Perfectly normal. (Caveat: Commonwealth English speaker). ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-ones-proper-english-or-not/666226/25 "2013-08-15T00:25:26Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > “We are all individuals”? I, too, am an individual. ---
**Author:** ![Weedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/weedy/32/301_2.png) [@Weedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weedy)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-ones-proper-english-or-not/666226/26 "2013-08-15T02:36:37Z")
It wouldn’t have occurred to me that there is anything incorrect about “these ones”. Do people have a problem with “which ones” as well? ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-ones-proper-english-or-not/666226/27 "2013-08-15T02:36:55Z")
“These ones” seems completely normal to me here in Southern Ontario… ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-ones-proper-english-or-not/666226/28 "2013-08-15T03:08:55Z")
> [@bup](#): > > It seems to follow from your argument, though, that we could do anything if it weren’t for a defendable reason. We could make any irregular verb regular, for instance. Indeed. Take, for example, something similar: the regularization of nouns. “Child” used to have as its plural “childer,” but then some folks thought that sounded like a singular, so they regularized the plural of “childer” as “children.” These days that sounds to some folks like a singular, so they pluralize it as “childrens.” That’s just how language works. It ain’t a Christmas tree farm to be ordered and weeded by experts, it’s a jungle in which we all live. And that’s glorious. There are, as I stated, two reasons for considering a grammar rule legit: 1. It’s something that native speakers do (e.g., in English, generally putting the adjective before the verb). These kinds of rules are really more along the lines of scientific observations. 2. Not doing it leads genuine lack of clarity–AND it’s not a made-up rule (like the “that” versus “which” rule–see another thread for that fun 🙂 ). These are more like rules of a game that you can choose to play for the sake of convenience in communication. But if the rule is a made-up one, or if it’s designed to eliminate trivial redundancy, or if it’s designed to bring English grammar into conformity with the grammar of another language, the rule can kiss my butt. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-ones-proper-english-or-not/666226/29 "2013-08-15T03:28:02Z")
> [@Sunspace](#): > > “These ones” seems completely normal to me here in Southern Ontario… It’s standard use here in New England too, though some people admonish others for saying it. They’re largely ignored, though. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-ones-proper-english-or-not/666226/30 "2013-08-15T05:44:17Z")
Proper or not, it just sounds wrong, like “yous guys.” ---
**Author:** ![nikonikosuru](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5f8ce5/32.png) [@nikonikosuru](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nikonikosuru)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-ones-proper-english-or-not/666226/31 "2013-08-15T12:17:30Z")
My supervisor would always yell at me whenever I said “these ones” to my client. 😕 It’s a hard habit to break. ---
**Author:** ![corkboard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e9bcb4/32.png) [@corkboard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/corkboard)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-ones-proper-english-or-not/666226/32 "2013-08-15T13:03:37Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Bwuh? 😕 > > [Google News Search](https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws&authuser=0&q=%22these+ones%22&oq=%22these+ones%22&gs_l=news-cc.3..43j43i53.2360.3378.0.3614.12.5.0.7.0.0.97.360.5.5.0...0.0...1ac.1.nnPUn8MEPx4). And that’s hundreds of written examples from just the last few weeks. I was talking about literature, not the journalistic powerhouses “Times of India” and “The Daily Beast”. ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-ones-proper-english-or-not/666226/33 "2013-08-15T13:59:32Z")
> [@Nars\_Glinley](#): > > I maintain that it is. My mom and my wife cringe when I use it. Googling has yielded mixed results so I turn to the brightest and most beautiful people on the planet to resolve the issue once and for all. “These ones” sure ain’t proper English. It should be “These’uns” and “Those’uns”. Guaranteed to double the cringe factor. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-ones-proper-english-or-not/666226/34 "2013-08-15T14:08:48Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > > [@Steven Pinker](#): > > > > “…For example, a listener can know that ‘thisrip’ must be this rip and not the srip because the English consonant cluster sr is illegal.” “sr” is an illegal consonant cluster in English? That’s news to me. Either I misread something there, or he’s misrepresenting the truth. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-ones-proper-english-or-not/666226/35 "2013-08-15T14:40:56Z")
> [@corkboard](#): > > I was talking about literature, not the journalistic powerhouses “Times of India” and “The Daily Beast”. That strikes me as an odd objection. Journalistic prose is more formal and standardized (and conservative grammatically) than literature. (And what’s wrong with the "Times of India??? It’s the largest English-language newspaper in the world.) Looking through the links, they suggest, to me, that in non-US dialects of English “these ones” and “those ones” is unremarkable and not non-standard, but it’s in a gray area in the US, as suggested by the Grammarphobia post before. I’m not sure what you want. I also picked from news sources not only because they are generally more conservative grammatically, but because they are current, and because I wanted clear examples of formal prose where the usage can’t be explained by the author putting on a voice or using non-standard dialect. I mean, heck, look at Merriam-Webster’s [definition for “they”](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/they?show=0&t=1376577481): > [@](#): > > 1a : **those ones** —used as third person pronoun serving as the plural of he, she, or it or referring to a group of two or more individuals not all of the same sex \ Emphasis mine. (I’m assuming you’d have the same objection for “those ones” and “these ones.” If not, why is “those ones” okay, but “these ones” is not. While we’re at it, nobody’s quite explained why “this one” is okay, but “these ones” is not.) ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-ones-proper-english-or-not/666226/36 "2013-08-15T14:45:01Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > “sr” is an illegal consonant cluster in English? That’s news to me. Either I misread something there, or he’s misrepresenting the truth. I can’t think of any word in English (excepting foreign language words like “Sri”) in which “sr” is used as a consonant cluster and not across syllable boundaries (as the end of one word or prefix and the beginning of another. Almost all the “sr” words in English are “mis-” or “dis-” plus an “r”-initial word.) And [here are the legal Scrabble plays for “sr”](http://www.scrabblefinder.com/contains/sr/). ---
**Author:** ![Blaster\_Master](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/cab0a1/32.png) [@Blaster\_Master](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blaster_Master)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-ones-proper-english-or-not/666226/37 "2013-08-15T15:00:02Z")
Yes, saying “these ones” is typically going to be redundant, but being redundant doesn’t make it improper. Hell, sometimes redundancy is useful because it adds emphasis or clarity. I hear it used fairly frequently and I’ll use it myself. I’ve never even heard of anyone objecting to it. And if the object is to using “ones” saying that it shouldn’t be pluralized, I don’t even think that’s a defensible position. That’s definitely used by a lot of native speakers and I know it’s used in other languages as well. Obviously, if I know there’s three, then I should probably specify, but if I don’t know the specific number or it’s clear in some other way, like with a gesture or another context, then saying “ones” is sufficient. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-ones-proper-english-or-not/666226/38 "2013-08-15T16:28:31Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > “sr” is an illegal consonant cluster in English? That’s news to me. Either I misread something there, or he’s misrepresenting the truth. **pulykamell** addressed this a bit, but to elaborate, consonant clusters generally refer to consonants that are clustered together within a single syllable. [This is not universal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consonant_cluster): > [@wikipedia](#): > > Some linguists argue that the term can only be properly applied to those consonant clusters that occur within one syllable. Others contend that the concept is more useful when it includes consonant sequences across syllable boundaries. According to the former definition, the longest consonant clusters in the word extra would be /ks/ and /tr/,[1] whereas the latter allows /kstr/. The German word Angstschweiß (/aŋstʃvaɪs/; “fear sweat”) is another good example, with a cluster of five consonants: /ŋstʃv/. I’m pretty sure Pinker was using the former definition. ---
**Author:** ![corkboard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e9bcb4/32.png) [@corkboard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/corkboard)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-ones-proper-english-or-not/666226/39 "2013-08-15T16:45:09Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > That strikes me as an odd objection. Journalistic prose is more formal and standardized (and conservative grammatically) than literature. (And what’s wrong with the "Times of India??? It’s the largest English-language newspaper in the world.) Looking through the links, they suggest, to me, that in non-US dialects of English “these ones” and “those ones” is unremarkable and not non-standard, but it’s in a gray area in the US, as suggested by the Grammarphobia post before. I’m not sure what you want. > > I also picked from news sources not only because they are generally more conservative grammatically, but because they are current, and because I wanted clear examples of formal prose where the usage can’t be explained by the author putting on a voice or using non-standard dialect. > > I mean, heck, look at Merriam-Webster’s [definition for “they”](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/they?show=0&t=1376577481): > > Emphasis mine. > > (I’m assuming you’d have the same objection for “those ones” and “these ones.” If not, why is “those ones” okay, but “these ones” is not. While we’re at it, nobody’s quite explained why “this one” is okay, but “these ones” is not.) Apples and oranges. You chose news sources on your own to counter my comment that the phrasing at issue doesn’t appear in literature (I acknowledge my original post wasn’t clear, and that you could have reasonably assumed I was talking about anything in print, including online news sources, and not books- novels, fiction/non-fiction, etc). I don’t disagree that the sources you reference appear to use the phrasing. But I stand by my assertion- well-written literature just doesn’t use phrasing such as “these ones” (cue the guy that finds the one appearance of it to prove me wrong). I don’t think you can compare the writing in online or printed journalism with literature. The quality of editing in journalism is often ridiculously bad, even from such respected sources as NY Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, etc. The OP asked whether the term was “proper English”. There are myriad ways to define that, but in my opinion, it isn’t proper, and my bookcases are my cite. But considering that Google definitions has determined that “literally” is now synonymous with “figuratively”, I guess I shouldn’t hold on too tightly. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![CanvasShoes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/74df32/32.png) [@CanvasShoes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CanvasShoes)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-ones-proper-english-or-not/666226/40 "2013-08-15T17:17:28Z")
It’s an awkward phrase. I don’t know if it’s legitimately wrong though. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-ones-proper-english-or-not/666226.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-ones-proper-english-or-not/666226.md?page=3)