It’s nothing new in the world of English language to expect literate writers to make verbs agree with subjects.
For example:
Our reason is based on solid evidence.
Our reasons are based on solid evidence.
Writers are also expected to make pronouns agree with their antecedents, like:
Early efforts to oppose the hydrogen bomb failed because they ignored political issues. No one wanted to expose himself to anticommunist hysteria.
… and NOT like:
Early efforts to oppose the hydrogen bomb failed because it ignored political issues. No one wanted to expose themselves to anticommunist hysteria.
Here’s the thing: There are two problems with making pronouns agree with their referents.
First, should you use a singular or plural pronoun when referring to a noun that is singular in grammar but plural in meaning?
For example: When referring to singular nouns such as a group, committee, staff, administration, and so on, should you use a singular or plural verb?
Some writers use a singular verb and pronoun when the group acts as a single entity:
The committee has met but has not yet made its decision.
… but they use a plural verb and pronoun when its members act individually:
The faculty have the memo, but not all of them have read it.
These days, plurals are irregularly used in both senses. However, plural is the rule in British English.
Second, what pronoun should you use—it or they—to refer to pronouns such as someone, everyone, no one, and to singular common nouns that signal no gender: teacher, doctor, student?
Some writers casually use they:
Everyone knows they must answer for their actions.
When a person is on drugs, it is hard to help them.
However, formal usage requires a singular pronoun:
Everyone realizes that he must answer for his actions.
The thing is, this rule raises the problem of biased language.
Gender and Biased Language
In the book, “Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace,” authors Joseph Bizup and Joseph M. Williams say common sense demands that you don’t gratuitously offend readers, but if you reject “he” as a generic pronoun because it’s biased and “they” because some readers consider it ungrammatical, then you are left with only bad choices.
As a result, some writers choose a clumsy “he or she”; others choose a worse “he/she” or even “s/he”:
If a writer ignores the ethnicity of his or her readers, s/he may respond in ways the writer would not expect words that to him or her are innocent of bias.
Some writers substitute plurals for singulars:
When writers ignore their readers’ ethnicity, they may respond in ways they might not expect words that are to them innocent of bias.
However, in that sentence, “they,” “their,” and “them” are confusing, because they can refer either to writers or readers. To the careful ear, a sentence with singular nouns and pronouns seems more precise:
When a writer ignores his reader’s ethnicity, his reader may respond in ways that he might not expect words that are to him innocent of bias.
Some also try a first person “we”:
If we ignore the ethnicity of our readers, they may respond in ways we would not expect words that to us are innocent of bias.
Yet again, “we” can also be ambiguous. You could also try impersonal abstraction to rewrite the sentence, but that creates its own problem:
Failure to consider ethnicity may lead to unexpected responses to words considered innocent of bias.
According to Bizup and Williams, for years to come, writers will have a problem with singular generic pronouns, and to some readers, any solution will be awkward.
The authors suspect that eventually, the world will accept the plural “they” as a correct singular:
No one should turn in their writing unedited.
So, what should you really be doing and using to make your writing as correct and precise as possible?
Bizup and Williams state that you must write correctly, but if in defining correctness you ignore the difference between fact and folklore, you risk overlooking what is really important:
The choices that make your writing dense and wordy or clear and concise.
… and take note: You are not precise merely because you get “which” and “that” correctly, and avoid “finalize” and “hopefully.”
After all, many who obsess on such details are oblivious to this more serious kind of imprecision:
Too precise a specification of information processing requirements incurs the risk of overestimation resulting in unused capacity or inefficient use of costly resources or of underestimation leading to ineffectiveness or other inefficiencies.
In other words:
When you specify too precisely the resources you need to process information, you may overestimate. If you do, you risk having more capacity than you need or using costly resources inefficiently.
See?
Both versions of the paragraph are grammatically precise, but would you choose to read more of the first or the second?
Most likely, many of you would choose the second. After all, it’s easier to digest!
Bizup and Williams suspect that those who observe the rules all the time do so not because they want to protect the integrity of the language or the quality of our culture, but to assert a style of their own.
Some are straightforward and plain speaking; others take pleasure in a bit of elegance, in a touch of fastidiously self-conscious “class.”
For Bizup and Williams, that is an impulse you should not scorn in one another as writers, so long as such an impulse is not a pretext to discriminate and is subordinate to the more important matters.
What are these matters?
The choices that define not “good grammar” but clarity and grace.
Hope you learned something new from today’s article!
About The Dynamic Marketing Communiqué’s
“Wednesdays: Write with the Pen of the Masters”
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Hope you find this week’s insights interesting and helpful.
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Cheers,
Dyane Diasanta
Senior Content Writer
Valens Dynamic Marketing Capabilities
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