Comments on: Evolving Rules of Grammar

By: Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus)

Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 08:52:59 +0000

Hi Ian
I agree that it may be possible to restructure sentences to comply with established rules of grammar. However my point is that the rules themselves have evolved.

Brian

By: Evolving Rules of Grammar | Digital rights | Scoop.it

Evolving Rules of Grammar | Digital rights | Scoop.it — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 08:21:28 +0000

[...] Is “Why every researcher should sign up for their ORCID ID” Grammatically Incorrect? Yesterday a post of mine entitled “Why every researcher should sign up for their ORCID ID” was republished on the LSE Impact of Social Sciences blog. [...]

By: Ian Watson

Ian Watson — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 08:20:52 +0000

One solution is to use a different sentence construction ‘researchers should sign up for their…’
Or ‘ would all researchers sign up for their…’

By: Dominik Lukes

Dominik Lukes — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 18:47:06 +0000

I generally just point people to the Peeving category on the Language Log – http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=62. It generally discusses how ill-founded these preconceptions are.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with personal preferences on matters of usage. It becomes a lot more problematic when ill-informed people in positions of power (like teachers and newspaper editors) use it to judge people’s abilities in other fields. I have absolutely no sympathy with that and think these people deserve to be ridiculed the same way they ridicule others. I’ve written about that at some length (including comments) in the case of “literally” http://metaphorhacker.net/2011/02/literally-triumph-of-pet-peeve-over-matter/.

By: lescarr (@lescarr)

lescarr (@lescarr) — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 13:25:45 +0000

With the greatest of respect may I suggest that the biggest issue about ORCID is whether it offers a SINGULAR value proposition that encourages PLURAL scholarly services to flourish.

By: Virginia Knight

Virginia Knight — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 09:35:49 +0000

I use ‘they’ as a singular – I’m in good company.
Despite having a Classics degree, I don’t mind ‘data’ as a singular – when a word enters English it takes on a life of its own. I tend to make ‘data’ singular in speech, but often plural in writing, depending on the local house style.

But ‘Myself and my co-author Jenny Delasalle disagreed’ makes me wince. I realise you want to make it clear that you disagreed with the preceding quotation, not with one another, but I would have said ‘My co-author… and I disagreed with this’.

By: Emma Tonkin (@emmatonkin)

Emma Tonkin (@emmatonkin) — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 13:43:38 +0000

Of course in this specific instance it might’ve been easiest to use ‘Why every researcher should sign up for an ORCID ID’ ;-)

By: Jonathan Blaney

Jonathan Blaney — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 11:48:53 +0000

I used to work as a lexicographer at OUP. In the New Oxford Dictionary of English, for example, we used singular they in definition writing as a matter of policy.

I like the summary of the arguments, with useful links, given on Stan Carey’s language blog a couple of days ago: http://stancarey.wordpress.com/2013/01/29/singular-they-you-and-a-senseless-way-of-speaking/