Re: Hideous grammar

[chuck mccaffrey <cmccaffrey -at- SPYGLASS -dot- COM>]

In article <9507271938 -dot- AA28448 -at- cobra -dot- ansoft -dot- com>, nancy ott
<ott -at- ansoft -dot- com> wrote:

> > I'm seeing more and more hideous grammar popping up these days,

> [examples deleted]

> Unfortunately, using an " 's " as a plural is endemic.  I've just
> about given up pointing it out to the parties involved.  ("But it
> looked right to me!" was the usual response.)  It hit a new low when I
> saw it used in conjunction with several misspelled dirty words on a
> bathroom wall at my youngest brother's high school.  (I'll pass on
> reprinting the exact text, which was pretty offensive.)  Now, people
> who write this kind of graffiti in bathrooms tend to be semi-literate
> at best.  But the author should have at least used the correct
> spellings of the anatomical parts to which she was referring!  8-)

> Hideous thought: is this passing into common usage?  I know the
> grammarians among us cringe at some of the recent alterations to
> common English usage (e.g., using "they" as the gender-neutral
> alternative to "he" or "she").  I can live with things like that, but
> the " 's " plural really raises my hackles (or is it "hackle's").

> - nancy

> --
> nancy ott -dot-  -dot-  -dot-  -dot-  -dot-  -dot-  -dot-  -dot- ott -at- ansoft -dot- com -dot-  -dot-  -dot-  -dot-  -dot-  -dot-  -dot-  -dot-  -dot- http://www.ansoft.com/~ott/
> ===================================================================
> Earth is a beta site.

I think that "they" as a gender-neutral alternative to "she" or "he" makes
perfect sense.  And I am not alone.  Enough people use "they" in this way
to make it reasonable for it to be "correct usage."  The rules for English
usage are not immutable.  As such, I several years ago changed the "rules"
that I learned long ago about the use of she, he, they, and the pompous
and almost useless "one," which I avoid as much as possible.  Holding onto
antique or useless ideas is, well, antique and useless.

What's the plural of "Charles" as in the sentence, "I went to a party last
night and there were seven Charless (or Charleses or Charles's) there"?
The first isn't "correct" and it doesn't look right.  The second is
"correct" but it doesn't look right, either.  The third isn't "correct"
but it's close to correct and it looks subjectively better to some people
than the second. What's the problem?  Are some of us so stuck on "rules"
that we can't change our minds?  Are we so mentally decrepit that we
cannot learn new ideas?

As I said, the rules for English usage are not immutable.  It may give
some folks a sense of importance to believe that the rules are immutable
and that they know those rules, but this is a false sense of importance.
It means nothing.  English isn't as precise as, oh, say physics.  Trying
to pretend that it is as precise and therefore "scientific" as physics is
an exercise in pompousness and futility, something akin to the cry,
"Writing geeks are just as knowledgeable and important (and worth as much
salary?) as technical geek!"  Why attempt such a pointless comparison?
Enjoy writing for what it is, don't defend it as something it is not.
Some of the beauty of English (and other languages) comes from their _not_
being precise, comes from the writer's ability to manipulate, stretch,
explore, expand, and tempt the boundaries of the "rules" when it makes
sense to do so.  And even in technical writing, where we have reasons to
be precise, accurate, and concise, if we spend so much time fussing over
the "rules" that we miss the essence of what the text is trying to convey,
then we have missed the point and do not deserve to call ourselves
writers.

That said, some rules are, at least for the time being, reasonable and
share a reasonable currency with enough other folks to make them worth
following.  But reducing writing to a mechanical assignment of rules in a
one-to-one mapping that apes mathemtatics does service neither to writing
nor to mathematics.

Your mileage may vary.  I remain an experiment of one and your humble reporter.