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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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I have a friend who is a lawyer with a top UK firm. She has never learned to type, she has always had a secretary and a dictating machine. I suspect she hasn't actually "written" anything for years.
I am hugely amused by her e-mails which are truly - awful. they are full of typos, careless spelling, dubious grammar and random abbreviations. She would never send out a business letter looking like that.
I think that is where a lot of the tolerance is coming from on the internet. A lot of very clever people are out there trying to communicate but they can't actually ... type. Their tolerance level has a trickle down effect and us lesser mortals get away with more in their slipstream.
I've always thought of a (non-business) e-mail as "written down talking" not a letter. I suppose that is why the rate of change is increasing. We throw together a quick e-mail, rather than writing a considered letter. Aplogies for those of you who manage to post e-mails in perfect prose!
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newbie
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<there is no greater stretch in terms of stretches> Would that be the preponderant pandiculation? 
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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jmh>I do find the idea of alternating his/her supremely silly. I agree wholeheartedly with this, and I will throw in "his or her" and the artificial concepts (like jhe) which have been suggested over the years. But I also prefer me using 'his' and you using 'her' as opposed to 'their' as a singualar -- it just "sounds" better to these Old Ears. Each to his own, I guess. 
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enthusiast
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heavens above! such big words. you're going to lose me with the old pandiculation thing i'm afraid.
language usually changes for a reason and "his" sounds crazy no matter who taught it to us at school. "his or her" is too much trouble in most speech and even writing (because we love to read a smooth sentence) so "their" sounds the best alternative. some words don't sound right at first and some do get discarded as it becomes obvious we were trying to hard. i think "their" is becoming accepted.
i had a teacher at school who adamantly taught us "his" and this grand old gentleman also objected to "okay" telling us we shouldn't use it if we don't know what it means. i looked it up and it didn't help me use the word at all. the fact is "okay" fits a slot perfectly. all this taught me was that rules don't count for ****!
on the toeic and toefl tests there is often a question about group pronouns as in "the team lost their/its way", well, either sounds okay to me but the real answer is "its" because "team" is techically singular. but if you think without grammar rules "their" refers to the people within the team.
how does everyone feel about "Ms"? i never use it, not because i don't like the idea but because it's too much trouble to even pronounce the zzzz sound. i'm not in the mainstream here so i don't know how things are in the real world with that one. i'd be interested to hear...
i also have no reason to use super polite english so i've never had "their" tested in a formal situation.
my old teacher tried to keep the status quo in the face of an unrelenting laziness. i think changing it in the face of the same laziness won't help either. ten years or so might tell which way we go!
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Joined: Apr 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Well, I certainly feel humbled... I thought that his (or her, as the case may be) sounded better -- but now I'm informed it "sounds crazy"... no matter where I learned it.
I guess I better get an adjustment on my hearing aids.
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enthusiast
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tsuwm
SORRY!!!!!!
let me rephrase that....
it sounds wrong (to me) when some of the hises are hers.
but i understand perfectly anyone who feels "their" is pushing thngs too much. that was meant to be my point.
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Joined: Apr 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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>it sounds wrong (to me) when some of the hises are hers.
sure, and this touches on the fairness issue which came up here earlier and also on the "one of the guys" thread. I'm going to start a new thread....
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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>>it sounds wrong (to me) when some of the hises are hers.<< Oh, william, how funny that sounds! I've never seen a plural of the word 'his' before! My lookup offered alternatives from hisses to hives! That was pretty good, Friend! I even understood what you meant, and that kinda worries me! But I'm wondering: how many of the hises belong to her?
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newbie
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> how does everyone feel about "Ms"? < A couple of current threads can be tied together for this. One thread remarked that a word was a "skin of thought" which conveys underlying ideas. Another was the role of language in adapting to cultural attitudes and behaviours from the "political correctness" strand. I think the evolution of the past use of "Mister" and "Miss" can guide us in it's future use. (Historians please feel free to confirm alter or refute this )It could be argued that Mister has evolved to a more generic adult male title and is no longer an indication of social status. (It could be argued that the advent of the industrial revolution altered the "status quo" so to speak.) As the importance of defining class/occupation in a title has changed, so has the word. Miss has become a generic unmarried female title, and no longer has it's place in marking the eldest female and consequestly the most eligible to be married. Perhaps this happened as such a marker was no longer considered so important that it was everpresent in a title. I would argue that a female's marital status is now no longer such an imperative piece of information to convey that it needs to be in a title (and thus on your telephone bill, listserves, etc.), and consequestly, can be shed also. Perhaps Mrs. could be the generic female term. or Ms. or something else. To take it a step further, are we really conveying much information in our titles anyway? It strikes me that apart from the married/unmarried female thing it's only purpose is to lend a polite form of address by not using a person's first name. The whole caper could be dispensed with by simply considering it polite to address people by their given names. This has the added benefit of giving people the choice to pick their own title, like Supreme Ultimate, for example What do youse think?
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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> The whole caper could be dispensed with by simply considering it polite to address people by their given names.
I agree. I always use whole names, omitting the Mr/Mrs/Whatever. It is common pravtice in the field that I work in and I have never received a complaint.
If I am asked for a title I say Ms. I have been a Ms. since I was 13 or 14, I suppose. I decided I didn't want to be a Miss any longer. I retained my original name on marriage, as did many of my friends. I am the final member of a large family. I thought I might as well let the name die with me, rather than discarding it on marriage.
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