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RE: pronouns and portfolios--bringing it back tech writing
Subject:RE: pronouns and portfolios--bringing it back tech writing From:"Brian Hoskins" <bhoskins -at- oz -dot- quest -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 10 Apr 2001 15:21:44 +1000
Bonnie wrote
<<It's not the singular verb that I think
people here are talking about. It's the
pronoun agreeing in number with its
antecedent.>>
I trust you are happy to correct the following sentences:
"And whoso fyndeth hym out of swich blame,
They wol come up..."
(Chaucer - The Pardoner's Prolong. c1395)
"There's not a man I meet but doth salute me
As if I were their well-acquainted friend"
(Shakespeare - Comedy of Errors. 1593)
"'Tis meet that some more audience than a mother,
Since nature makes them partial, should o'erhear
The speech."
(Shakespeare - Hamlet. 1601)
"No man goes to battle to be killed. - But they do get killed."
(George Bernard Shaw - Three Plays for Puritans. 1901)
".....every man went to their lodging."
(Lord Berners translation of Froissart's Chronicles. 1523)
I thank Webster's Dictionary of English Usage from which I derived these
excellent quotes.
The use of "They/their/them" to refer to a singular object has been common
in English for 600 or more years. The grammatical derision of this usage is
only 200 years old. We lost "Thou/thee/ye" for social reasons and we are
likely to loose "he/she" for the same reasons.
And so we introduce "then".
<<Happily, I've converted my colleagues on
this issue and on the issue of not using
"then" as anything but what it is -- an
adverb.>>
<< "Enter a name and an address, then click OK." >>
While I agree that it is incorrect to use "then" as a conjunction which your
example implies to be the problem, don't forget that it is used as both an
adjective and a noun.
"...Reagan, the then Governor of California..."
(Jess Nierenberg - Maledicta. 1983)
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