So...my post about lie/lay a month or so ago kind of went sideways and ended in a bad way.
I have another grammar conundrum that frustrates me to no end that I need to post about.
"A writer uses their pen" is grammatically incorrect, because it uses a plural pronoun "their" to refer to a singular noun "writer."
Any of the following is grammatically correct:
"A writer uses her pen."
"A writer uses his pen."
"A writer uses his or her pen."
"Writers use their pens."
My issue is that, in popular usage, the plural pronoun referring to a singular noun seems to be winning out. People say "My friend lost their dog" and things like that all the time. And I've noticed that it appears in writing as well (I mark a lot of papers, so I'm especially referring to the writing of undergrads. It's a big battle getting them to follow this rule).
Do people think it's bad style to use "their" as a singular pronoun and that it's a rule that should be upheld? Or is the plural pronoun bound to become accepted as a gender neutral singular pronoun and grammar sticklers should just let it go. One thing to note is that Palahniuk uses the plural pronoun to refer to singular nouns in the Craft Essays on this site.
I do it all the time, unless I'm going for formality. I don't think it's detrimental to the writing. EDIT - But that's probably a result of my speech habits.
I'm a stickler for grammar, so if I notice it, it irritates me a little. It's such a common thing that it's difficult to notice on first pass, like a orange or another egregious mistake. I think you can get away with it.
Pushpaw, whatever would the editors do if we took away their jobs?
It is bound to become accepted, and it is generally accepted already.
Grammar changes, this is just a new change in reaction to political correctness. I don't see a problem with it.
Drea - I was actually wondering if anyone edited Palahniuk's essays, as there are other grammar errors in them. I'm not trying to take away from them - they have amazing lessons in them and I've learned all sorts of things about writing from them that I'd never even considered. But those errors...in a different setting, with a writer who isn't famous and respected, I wonder if they errors might take away credibility or something. Shouldn't writers know and use the rules of grammar in most cases, except when there's a really good reason, stylistically, to break them? Editors should correct slip-ups, but would an editor want to go through a piece of writing and fix the plural pronoun error 100 times?
Oh man, what a curse upon you that you read essays and the grammar is what remains when the lesson is learned.
Seriously.
When I read something and it flows as words do in my own subconsious, which is to say, not always grammatically, I become wholly engrossed. Ecstatic, even.
When an author's writing comes off as contrived, "A writer uses her pen," it can run the risk of jarring me out of that reading reverie. Know what I mean? The aforementioned example belongs in context, because sometimes the correct useage is the right grammatical choice and to say "her pen" would be the better choice between "their pen."
You know some authors are horrific spellers, right? Like borderline dyslexic bad and yet they churn out great books. I would say in response to your question, the answer is yes and no. I really really like this; "Learn the rules. Follow the rules. Break the rules."
As a newbie writer, I don't get hung up on the words when writing. There is a difference between writing and editing and I chooose to believe any editor with a bestseller in their hands (her hands? his hands?) would happily fix a plural pronoun error a thousand times.
I don't believe it is an issue outside of grammarians who stick their nose up at it. If a writer wants his fiction to read like a technical manual then that is her prerogative.
Would you say a painter who knows the way different kinds of paints mix is a snob for having and applying this knowledge? Couldn't knowing grammar be about knowing how the English language works, the tool of the writer's trade? But, as you say, if a writer wants his writing to read like she doesn't understand how to use the language, that is his or her prerogative too.
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/07/i_wont_hire_people_who_use_poo.html
There are over 2,000 replies to this article on grammar. Whoa, hey?
The author focuses mainly on the obvs faux pas, the "they're, their, there," and the "its/it's," transgressions, errors which always raise my eyebrows when I come across them in a "writer's" work. You can argue the importance/validity of the devil in those details until you've wasted away all your precious writing time, if you're so inclined but maybe, just maybe there is validity in saying you can have textbook grammar and a shit plot, flat characters and flaccid ending, so what is the point of all that perfectly placed grammar if and when the narrative sucks?
Yes Pushpaw, knowing how the English language works is essential to writing however, grammar is only one piece of the much larger literary puzzle most of us are here to build.
Heh heh. She said, "poo."
But story is king. If you are passable with grammar and you tell a great story, you'll have no problems selling.
I agree wholeheartedly - story is king. Would never say grammar is more important than story or character, and a host of other things. But is story on its own enough?
Imagine shooting a film. The story is excellent, but the technical aspects -- the camera work and lighting --stink. Is it going to be a great film?
To think that editors don't care may be idealising them -- they won't necessarily overlook the little stuff to find out if a manuscript is brilliant. They're just people - picky and cranky like anyone else. If they get distracted by basic grammar errors, wouldn't it just be giving them a reason to discard the manuscript? In the same way someone reading through 150 job resumes will discard based on tiny errors - just because any reason will do with that many resumes to go through.
So, I guess I'm saying the little stuff could take down a brilliant work before it's even looked at seriously.
Anyway, to each their own. (that's an error)
Agents and publishers are (from what I hear) completely turned off by bad grammar, and they say they aren't there to correct your grammar. If you submit a manuscript that has blatant errors, they will not even read it.
Would you say a painter who knows the way different kinds of paints mix is a snob for having and applying this knowledge? Couldn't knowing grammar be about knowing how the English language works, the tool of the writer's trade? But, as you say, if a writer wants his writing to read like she doesn't understand how to use the language, that is his or her prerogative too.
Comparative to painting skill I'd say it's more akin to the correct way to hold a brush. Grammar isn't that difficult, and based on the skill level of popular books it seems a pretty rudimentary knowledge will get you far. I do agree with you on this subject, I think if they don't know how to put a good looking sentence together then they just shouldn't bother writing. I do believe that, but I also think that to master grammar at the skill level of literary fiction or thereabouts takes about however much time it takes to read a book or two on grammar.
There are subtleties in language, not just like holding a brush correctly. If you want to write for money, I'm sure you can find ways to get away without being really good at grammar, if you keep your sentences simple and focus on the really really cool action you have. Still, even genre publishers will not read your book if you have actual grammar mistakes.
Yeah, I'm with you on this mostly.Though, those are probably really stupid mistakes being made. Do publishers turn down manuscripts for their comma splices and the like? Possibly, but that would kind of negate the whole purpose of a big portion the professional editing process if every ms was that clean. If the grammar is what kills your book then you've got a lot of thinking to do about why you bother living. What Michael Chabon or Cormac McCarthy do with grammar is beautiful and impressive but then it's not that hard to understand what they're doing. Much like spelling, grammar errors can be fixed within a minute by referencing some guides. So I don't quite remember now if I had a point in my side of the discussion other than I generally agree with you guys and find these types of questionable usage arguments intriguing yet I'm not sure if there's much debate on the subject other than the acknowledgment of it.
For the record, both Clapton and Dylan fucked up the ever tricky lay v. lie usage. Writers, I say to you, be consoled. Take heart. Sally will still lay down and Dylan's lady will always lay lady lay across that big brass bed. If those two hacks can muddle their way through the written language, by golly so can you. Just get the basics write, ok?
; )
Yay, Pushpaw's back! I do enjoy these grammar puzzles you posit.
Okay, so technically you are correct that in the instance of "A writer uses their pen..." their, morphologically a plural possessive pronoun is therefore not the "correct" pronoun to use. However, being as sensitive to grammar as you seem to be, it comes off as odd to me that that is the problem you have with the sentence. Your only concern is that people use a plural pronoun to refer to a singular antecedent. And your solution is to not use it...
Well, let me break down, what is for me, the problem with the sentence: writer here is a singular non-gendered third-person noun. So, in order to replace it with a suitable pronoun (which you accept is the ultimate reason for the use of they), we need a singular non-gendered third-person pronoun. Well, english has two of them; the problem being neither actually work in this situation. They are of course it and one.
"A writer uses its pen." But there's a difference between epicene and neuter, so we don't use it to refer to epicene nouns, only objects. What strikes me as particularly odd is that I'm sure most would see the problem with this sentence immediately, but would not see a problem with the sentence, "A computer uses its memory." And I will come back to this later.
"A writer uses one's pen." One, of course, is the actual third-person epicene pronoun. The problem being that one can only take one as its antecedent. "One does not simply use one's pen." This is also compounded by the fact that the third-person singular epicene pronoun doesn't actually have a possessive pronoun form, only a possessive determiner form: the difference between "One's pen is used." (determiner) and "This pen is one's." (pronoun... which is grammatically incorrect.)
And now we come to what really drives me crazy about most "grammar sticklers". It's not that they pick a few rules that they know really well and those are what they will call everyone else out on, and ignore (even trample over) most others... I have to admit I do this myself; I now always notice missing commas before direct address, but screw up semicolons regularly. And it isn't that they try to enforce archaic rules against the flowing tide of common usage: I personally think we should keep the oxford comma, even when it isn't strictly necessary. But that most often, they don't even know what it is they're arguing about, namely the difference between grammar and usage.
"A writer uses their pen..." is grammatically incorrect. And it is incorrect because the grammar rule is that pronouns must match their antecedents. Their is plural, and writer is singular, so they don't match.
"A writer uses his (or her, or his or her (why the man always gotta go first?)) pen..." is grammatically incorrect. For the same reason, the pronoun must match the antecedent. His is masculine, and writer is epicene, so they don't match. The grammar rule isn't that pronouns must match plural and singular forms but gender forms don't have to match. It's as wrong as saying, "A mother uses his pen." Your examples (aside from rewriting the whole thing into the plural form) are all grammatically incorrect, but accepted in usage, almost as accepted as using Singular They (which is so accepted it gets a proper noun.) And they are accepted in usage because we have long known that there is a deficiency in our language. We do not have a pronoun to fulfill the role that our grammar demands we fill.
And I do like that you attribute this as a difference in style,
Do people think it's bad style to use "their" as a singular pronoun...
Because it is a matter of style. There is no correct answer, so it is only how the writer chooses to get around the problem inherent in the system. This particular question is a matter of which aspect of pronoun-antecedent matching is more important to you, gender or number. And the more conservative sticklers like to maintain that since the issue is about gendered and non-gendered nouns, this is some new attempt to make english more politically correct. But we've been using they to refer to singular antecedents in this situation for a long time:
There's not a man I meet but doth salute me / As if I were their well-acquainted friend — Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors, Act IV, Scene 3 (1594)
And actually, American Heritage finds examples going as far back as the 1300s, in particular to generic nouns like one, a person, an individual, and each. This is not new. It is in fact older than we've been using you as the only singular second-person pronoun, Lest thou forgetest(?) (I don't actually know my thou conjugations, because we don't anymore...)
Now, it certainly has been politicized since the 1960s, and I will grant that one of the work-arounds, that of using he as a generic, non-gendered pronoun for these instances, has fallen out of favor. But it was never any more grammatically "correct". And in fact only dates back to a codified source in the 18th century. (And I suspect is the same school of thought that decided that english needed to be more like latin and inserted latin grammar rules into our own... like proscribing split infinitives and ending sentences with 'with'.) So this isn't really a case of "he" being taken over by "they", but really the ultimate failure of "he" to supplant "they" as the accepted generic pronoun for these cases. Things change, and sometimes they don't...
So here I come back to "a computer uses its memory." We would not say, "A computer uses his memory." And we haven't since the 1940s. But before 1940 we would always say "A computer uses his memory," because a computer was a person who calculated sums. That's what a computer was from the early 1600s until the invention of the Turing Machine. And just as we know that "a writer" is a person who writes, we knew "a computer" was a person who computes. And now we know that a computer is a machine. But grammar doesn't care. Saying "a computer uses its memory" would have been just as incorrect in 1812 as saying "a computer uses his memory" is today. Grammar only says that pronouns and antecedents must agree, it is common usage that determines which ones actually do.
TL;DR - Each is as grammatically correct as the other.
^ Wow, I'd never heard that Shakespeare line. Good to know. I started using "they/their" not to avoid offending people with a "he/his," but because I didn't know the sex; I figured, why not go neutral? Better than using too many words, and certainly better than trying to invent and introduce a new pronoun.
They've tried that a few times. It never caught on... stuff like zhe, zher, shi, sher...
XyZy - without a doubt your post has blown open the issue. You're absolutely right that we choose to match number over gender with this grammar problem. I can safely say I had never analyzed the issue this way before, but I see what you are saying. As you point out, another choice we have to make is to choose a pronoun meant to refer to a human noun "his" or "her" or "their" rather than one meant to stand in for non-human nouns "its". So I guess somehow in English we favour human identity as the strongest logic for matching noun and pronoun.
I will say that, when choosing one human, we assume (rightly or not) that human has one gender, so we pick "his" or "her" , even if "writer" might be a genderless noun (though one might ask how, logically, it could ever be, since it will always refer to one human being).
Thanks for the mind-twisting explanation.
I guess we arrive at the same question, though. Is it acceptable style to mismatch number in the pronoun-noun relationship? It's not in the verb-subject relationship. In English, for whatever reason, we favour number as a way of glossing over the fallibility of our grammar.
I've been thinking it over a lot lately (yes, a true grammar geek) and I'm starting to lean towards being ok with breaking the usage rule to represent natural dialogue, since the rule is broken all the time in spoken english. But I would still try to avoid the usage error in the bulk of my prose outside of dialogue (and dialogue where I specifically want to represent someone making this usage error).
Ultimately, I think that in twenty years, "they" and "their" will be accepted as both singular and plural pronouns. But until then, I just can't bring myself to (knowingly, because I actually make the error by mistake all the time) completely disregard the usage rule.
Actually, I was recently working on a story and to avoid having to make this choice, I found myself reorganizing sentences to get rid of the personal pronoun completely. Kind of a fun challenge.
Develop your own style. It's like taking five guitar lessons and starting a band. Think of Hubert Selby. The man used no punctuation other than /s where a contraction joined could be another word (i.e. well we/ll). Other than that, don't was dont, doesn't was doesnt. He developed his characters so well he didn't need dialogue attribution and you'd know who was talking. Each character had a different rhythm and you could catch that rhythm as easy as you can tap a 4/4 beat on your steering wheel while driving.
Stop worrying and write. You can fix it in the rewrites.
To address the original topic, it really depends on context. Perhaps you don't want to reveal the gender of said writer. In which case you'd go with what sounds right to the ear, the one on your head and the one inside. The gender-neutral writer uses their pen. You lose all subtlety with 'a writer uses its pen'. Then again, it could make for interesting experimentation, but if you're like me and 'a writer uses its pen' sounds like garbage I'd just eschew the whole thing. 'A writer uses their pen' because there are no concrete rules to the English language. It's a living thing in that it's constantly in flux. It's all something we agree upon, and if something makes sense in context, let it ride. It's a complex system of symbols. Same as measurements, musical scales, et cetera. Avoirdupois or metric? Traditional 12-tone western musical scale or Partch's 43-tone scale? It's simply using different means to arrive at the same end, the communication of ideas. Let it go. You've been speaking English for however long, long enough to want to write stories. I think Vonnegut said "I write best when I sound like a fellow from Indianapolis." Let all these rules go and get your story on the page. I want to read it.
I will say that, when choosing one human, we assume (rightly or not) that human has one gender, so we pick "his" or "her" , even if "writer" might be a genderless noun (though one might ask how, logically, it could ever be, since it will always refer to one human being).
Yeah, but here you're falling into the same trap that a lot of grammar sticklers fall into; you're confusing the morphological forms that follow grammar rules, with the semantic forms that follow usage rules. In english writer is morphologically neutral. Semantically we know that a writer is a person, so it necessarily has a gender, but the grammar rules that govern the use of the word don't care... as long as they match the pronoun. And if we had a pronoun that matched morphologically, we wouldn't have this semantic argument.
I guess we arrive at the same question, though. Is it acceptable style to mismatch number in the pronoun-noun relationship? It's not in the verb-subject relationship.
Well, you have to be careful with this comparison, because there is a huge difference between verb-noun agreement, and pronoun-antecedent agreement. Every verb has a singular form and a plural form. Every noun has a singular form and a plural form. So it will always have an answer, you just choose the forms that match... or the form that matches. Whatever fits your style.
In this instance, again, there isn't a matching form. It was always a matter of usage. So for 400 years it was acceptable to use a singular they, and then for 150 years it was acceptable to use a genderless he, and now it is going back. And the only real determinate in what is the acceptable style, is your audience.
In English, for whatever reason, we favour number as a way of glossing over the fallibility of our grammar.
Actually it's not for whatever reason, it's for a specifically english reason. We stole english from other languages, but not in their entirety. So we took our pronouns from some mish-mash of the romance and germanic languages (they actually comes from the norwegian I think...) but we didn't take the gendered nouns from those languages. So in french, for example, if you don't know if the person is male or female, you would default to the gender of the noun, which for a writer is the male écrivain. Then your decision of which pronoun to use is made for you. The languages that we stole our pronouns from, never needed a non-gendered pronoun, so there wasn't one for us to steal... So we don't have one.
And at heart it isn't really that we're more comfortable glossing over number in favor of gender. It has to do specifically with the word they, and the many other ways we use it. For instance we already use they to refer to morphologically singular nouns, like band, and family, and flock. Collective nouns are morphologically singular, and even when used as plurals that take plural verbs and pronouns, they don't change into plural forms. We already have a grammar rule that requires the use of they to refer to singular nouns. So using they to refer to singular nouns in another case isn't such a big logical leap, certainly not as much of a leap as using the gendered he to refer to ungendered nouns, because there are no other grammatically acceptable situations for that. There is also the unspecific numbered nouns that occasionally have to take a plural for semantic reasons, even though they are singular, like anyone or each. We already, and correctly, use they here, so adding yet another job to the flexible pronoun makes more sense than trying to force it on another that isn't so flexible.
Ultimately, I think that in twenty years, "they" and "their" will be accepted as both singular and plural pronouns.
Maybe ironically, I don't see this happening. If we look at the history of what has already happened, this isn't something that's going to be "settled" anytime soon. It was an already widely accepted practice and usage. Then some people decided that it was inappropriate and defaulting to he was easier and just made more sense (which in some ways it does, and in others it doesn't), and now that is no longer appropriate... But at least some people had to find they disagreeable to proscribe its use in the first place, and enough people had to agree for he to become the predominant "proper" usage. I suspect that people will continue to find they disagreeable for some time to come, and another solution or two will be posed. Perhaps an epicene pronoun will actually become adopted, or we may lose our attachment to 'person hood' and it becomes acceptable. But really, nothing significant has changed in our use of language regarding this issue from where we were before the 18th century usage rule to default to he. The problem is still there, and if using they wasn't good enough for people then, I don't see it settling in to being good enough for people in the near future.
Actually, I was recently working on a story and to avoid having to make this choice, I found myself reorganizing sentences to get rid of the personal pronoun completely. Kind of a fun challenge.
And this is always the most fun answer. Rather than to try to debate and second-guess yourself on a question where you can't actually be right, work around the question so it isn't an issue. Especially in instances like your example: "A writer uses their pen." Even I, with no qualms about the singular they in the first place, would say that this is a terrible use of it. Because even despite my arguments, a writer who takes into account both the semantic and morphologic (and even phonetic and connotative) could see that without the context to imply that a writer is a figurative stand-in for all writers, using they (with its implicit plurality) doesn't quite work in this case. "A writer uses their pen." lacks that context, so unless or until that use becomes standard, for everyone that doesn't have it ingrained in their idolect from a young age, it will always sound weird.
Thanks for the mind-twisting explanation.
You're welcome. I aim to confound.
@Chris
Stop worrying and write. You can fix it in the rewrites
Well... that's very platitudinous of you. What happens when it comes time to do the rewrites and you still don't have proper grammar because you don't know what proper grammar is? You can't fix something in post if you didn't know it's a problem in the first place. I'm not advocating coming to grinding halt every time an issue comes up, but in general, questions are good for spreading the general knowledge around so everyone can participate in the world. (How's that for a platitude...)
And Selby is actually the perfect example of this. Making the decision to eschew punctuation all together created situations where the meaning of a sentence could not be parsed through context, because the forms of words became identical to other words. So he had to go back and insert slashes wherever that became a problem, instead of rewriting everything so there were no contractions that caused that problem in the first place... which would have left a completely punctuation-free manuscript. Maybe if he had considered that in the first place he could have been truly daring, and creative, instead of only giving 90% after not worrying and fixing it later. (Not to actually take away from that achievement, I do admire that. I'm being snide for affectation's sake.)
One absorbs grammar or one does not. And there's something different with every patois I hear. Write like how you speak and you should be alright. I just don't like the persnickety obsessiveness of writers talking about writing instead of actually doing it. I love music and making music but I've spent too much of my life reading about it instead of actually fleshing out songs. Same thing with writing. So it's a bitch to myself, in a way.
I'd rather read an authentic story with trash grammar that I have to puzzle out through context than something bled dry of the passion which once informed it. You can fix grammar in the rewrite. We have autotune for trash musicians and grammar check for 'the writer who uses their pen'. Get a copy of Warriner's for god's sake. There's just no concrete rules to the language we're using is all I'm saying. You can get away with a lot. Let it roll.
Or if you're really shit you can just claim you're postmodern like that Kenji Siratori fella.
