Sunday, October 07, 2018

Pronouns: You had ONE job

... and that one job was to look at the illustration before writing the blurb, and today is the debut of the 13th Doctor, and you still write "a time-traveling alien called 'The Doctor' and his human companions"?

People! Embrace singular "they"! If you don't have a clue (and even in some cases if you do), it's here to help! Don't make us upgrade you.

All right, if you insist, here's another should-be-they pronoun from earlier in the week:
No, you haven't. You wouldn't burst into the room shouting that you just saw beer chugged through a nose, because you innately understand that noses are inalienably possessed, and you just wouldn't. What the hed means, of course, is "Hey, have you ever seen a frattybagger from ECU* chug beer through his nose?" But since that's inappropriately specific, we probably want an indefinite antecedent, and those go very well with "they": Have you ever seen someone chug beer through their nose?

If singular "they" is a bridge too far for you here, you might instead put your energy into wondering why grownup newspapers are running stories about beer-nose-chugging in the first place.

* Calm down, kids. I'm from Greenville.

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