Since the death last September of William Safire, the presidential speechwriter and political columnist who wrote the regular "On Language" feature in The New York Times Magazine, no one whom I know of has taken on the mantle of America's leading linguistic watchdog. I am not at this time a candidate for that post, but to partially restore the loss, I am today beginning what I expect to be a series of occasional blogs commenting on the use of the English language -- mainly the written language, and mainly as it is being put down at present in these United States. I am qualified to do this because some decades ago I was designated the "Official Class Grammarian" by my ninth-grade English teacher.
It was ironic to me that Safire issued his observations, inquiries and admonitions from a seat at the Times because the Times itself, though generally very well written, is a rather carelessly edited newspaper that regularly allows some of the most common faults in contemporary usage to appear in its pages. In recent months I have jotted down a few of these, and I want to point them out as illustrations of the slippage in grammar and usage that I suspect is more symptomatic of our time than of any other period in memory.
I think that these days the most widely ignored principals of proper English are the rules of agreement. Thus:
"a spouse's finding out about a cheating partner by reading their personal text
messages would have a profound effect on how such cases are played out..."
(December 9th, page-three continuation of a page-one article)
Got it? This sample violates one of two fundamental agreement requirements: namely, the requirement that pronouns must agree in number with their antecedents. If, that is, a pronoun relates or refers back to a noun preceding it in a sentence, the pronoun must be singular if the noun is singular, or be plural if the noun is plural. (Such a pronoun is called a "relative" pronoun.) In this case, the noun "partner" is singular, but the pronoun that relates to it, "their," is plural. This is what the Times would call a "disconnect" -- about which, more later -- and, I tell you, it can not be accepted!
This particular misusage has become epidemic. I really believe that in American written language, including language scripted for radio and television, such errors are now more common than examples of accurate agreement. A main reason for this is feminism, which has been a very positive development in many ways, but not necessarily in its effect on language. Granted, one of the flaws of English as it has evolved is its lack of a gender-neutral personal pronoun -- that is, a pronoun referring to person rather than to a thing. And it has never been a satisfactory solution to authorize the masculine form to relate to an antecedent that is neither masculine or feminine: "One must know his own mind." But the problem can't be solved by violating the rule of number agreement, especially when accurate alternatives are available. Thus, the sample above can easily be rectified by making the antecedent plural: "spouses finding out about cheating partners by reading their personal text messages." A less satisfying but nonetheless acceptable solution would be to retain the singular antecedent and replace "their" with "his or her." Any editor who does not catch and repair such an error is sleeping at the switch.
I don't seem to have recorded a violation of the second principal rule of agreement, requiring verbs to agree in number with their subjects. But this too is more frequently abused now than ever before. This error most commonly occurs when the subject is a "collective" noun - a singular noun that represents more than one person or thing, such as "group." Although every group contains more than one member, it is nonetheless a singular noun. It is one thing; it is not "groups." So it is mated with a singular verb (generally in our perverse language identified by the appearance of "s" at its end, the opposite of the convention for nouns). So: "The group is (not are) considered left-leaning."
I don't find such violations to be as grating as the previous example, and there are, and long have been, exceptions to this rule. For example: "The troupe were tired out by such a demanding play." The plural verb would be acceptable here because it conveys the sense that each member of the cast was fatigued - or, at least, that several members were fatigued -- and indeed it might be said that that tiredness can only be felt by individuals. Yet a singular verb in that sentence would not be incorrect.
The following, however, from page one of the Times of last October 24th, is incorrect:
"several visitors strolling by, each of whom wore face masks and vests..."
This is a different sort of agreement problem. Strictly speaking, this sample is not ungrammatical, because it is theoretically possible for each of several persons to wear more than one mask and more than one vest. But as a practical matter it is nonsense to indicate that. The writer obviously means that the each of the visitors wore a face mask and a vest.
I, by the way, would hyphenate the term "face mask," or, better still, would abridge it to "mask," since it is extremely unlikely that such an article would be worn anywhere but on the face. As Professor Strunk exclaims in the "little book" on grammar and usage that E.B. White reshaped into the indispensable Elements of Style, "Omit needless words!"
Well, look at this! My time is up, and I haven't got past the Times's agreement problems to those "disconnects" and other matters. Soon. Meanwhile, I hope I haven't committed any errors here.
Loading comments… 
Come on man. I know what you're trying to say, but for someone who prides himself on linguistic acumen, you should be a little more careful about accidental
It wasn't feminists that decided the English language shouldn't have gender-neu
Since the death last September of William Safire, the presidenti
People: who
Things: that
Books, that have presumably been edited by someone who knows language, contain glaring grammar mistakes. CORRECTION
Ditch the commas or change "that" to "which."
Sloppy grammar and sloppy language to me seem evidence of sloppy thinking, and are likely to promote further sloppy, careless thinking.
Precise, concise, well-artic
And I would like to think that the print news media holds itself to a slightly higher standard than the rest of the world.
But, language evolves. Cultures evolve. As unfortunat
Besides, it's all a sliding scale, now isn't it? My friend who works at the U.K.'s Telegraph derives no end of enjoyment from telling me how sloppy ALL American newspapers are with language. If I have to endure one more lecture on the "Oxford comma".... well, you get the point.
There is, however, something to be said for the pursuit of excellence in clear thinking and speaking, that is worth pursuing. For an entire segment of our society the F word in several forms serves as noun, adjective, verb and spontaneou
The word "their" is a possessive pronoun, not a relative pronoun. Jesus Christ. That is ninth grade English. The relative pronouns in the English language are: who, whose, whom, which and that.
Might I suggest rather than blaming poor grammar on feminism - I've heard it all, now - you purchase the book Grammar for Journalist
Every comprehens
http://en.
"A relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause within a larger sentence. It is called a relative pronoun because it relates to the word that it modifies. In English, relative pronouns are who, whom, which, whose, and that."
http://en.
A possessive pronoun is a part of speech that substitute
There are seven possessive pronouns in modern English: mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, and theirs, plus the antiquated possessive pronoun thine (see also English personal pronouns). The word its is, however, rarely used as such (almost always it functions as a possessive adjective)
And I will challenge you to find a grammar book or link to a grammar site that lists "their" along with who whose whom which and that as a relative pronoun.