James Woods vs Dictionary.com

Woods tweeted: “Please join me in using proper grammar, syntax, and spelling. The correct pronoun usage in the English language is “he” for a singular male and “she” for a singular female. “They” is used for the plural of either males, females, or both. Don’t be bullied by hare-brained liberals.”

Dictionary.com tweeted: “They has been in use as a singular pronoun since the 1300s. Among its best known users in history: Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Jane Austen.”

Scoop’s notes:

Woods is just being a prick, and dictionary.com’s post, while factually correct and vaguely amusing, is totally irrelevant to Woods’ point.

1. Dictionaries and grammar books serve separate purposes. A dictionary is descriptive, and a grammar book or style manual is prescriptive. The fact that a usage exists does not mean that it is proper, even if Shakespeare himself used it. For example, Shakespeare used terms like “more corrupter” and “most poorest.” Does that mean it is correct to use those constructions today?

2. The editors at dictionary.com must have used up too many credits on library science to fit any logic classes into their academic schedules. Ever if we were to assume that ol’ Billy Shakespeare and his hifalutin literary pals always used words correctly, a usage of any kind that was correct for them is not necessarily correct today, nor should it be, because languages are fluid. There is simply no logical connection between dictionary.com’s point and Woods’. If we adopt Chaucer’s usage as our standard, then we will only use “gay” to mean “lighthearted and carefree” and we should correctly refer to male homosexuals as “geldings” or “mares.” (NOTE: Chaucer did not distinguish between homosexuals and eunuchs, for reasons he is too dead to explain.)

3. I can also be a prick. There is a grammatical error in dictionary.com’s tweet. The word “they” should be in quote marks to indicate referring to a word as that word, just as I did earlier in this sentence. Without the quote marks, the sentence begins “They was,” as in “They wuz just about to filch the roscoe when the coppers showed their ugly mugs and told ’em to scram.” (Caveat: It is possible that dictionary.com did this on purpose to demonstrate a whimsical singular use of they, as kind of a literary joke consistent with their point. Maybe. But like Lou Grant, I hate whimsy.)

Having noted that dictionary.com is full of manure, let me point out that Woods is as well. No matter what the grammar books say, using the singular “they” is sometimes the only way to avoid either confusing declarations or the dreaded “his or her” construction.

For example:

A teacher addresses the co-ed class, “Everyone should create his own solution.” Yup. That’s perfect grammar, and perfectly confusing, since it binds the boys, but implies that the girls in the class may use another student’s solution. To get around the problem, the teacher must change the directive to “his or her,” or “their.” While “their” is, in theory, grammatically incorrect, it is the solution I prefer.

I would certainly support the use of the singular “they,” and there is no reason not to accept it because, as noted earlier in bold, languages are fluid.

That said, I hate it and it is often confusing.

14 thoughts on “James Woods vs Dictionary.com

  1. Re: “This site sure was better when you weren’t being such a political douche.”

    I don’t always agree with Scoopy, but I appreciate his sincere opinions.

    So, Scoopy, Lyndon La Rouche died today. Any thoughts on him?

  2. Other than the naked women, this type of article is why I stay here. I have stopped arguing politics as it is a dead=end discussion these days, but I love these types of discussions.

    I would add my own pet peeve, writing style-wise and that is the improper use of the apostrophe in words ending in an ‘s’ as Scoop noted above or, more recently such as the word Congress. To pluralize a word ending in ‘s’ requires ONLY an apostrophe (Congress’ duty is…) To use an apostrophe s (Congress’s duty…) is not only pretentious, it is wrong according to most writing style guides.

    Shameless beg here – visit http://www.chunder.weebly.com – give me some hits!

    1. I agree with that as applied to the spoken language.

      I’m hedging my bets when it comes to the formal written language.

      In my opinion, all linguistic “rules,” are just general guidelines, and ought to come from the bottom up, not dictated from the top down, ala the French Academy. The purpose of linguistic modeling ought to be to describe how people speak, not to determine that one economic or intellectual class is right and everyone else wrong. But we will never get 100% acceptance of that proposition.

  3. I like to pluralize, when required, to escape that tight spot. So “Everyone should create his own solution” becomes “People should create their own solutions”, or whatever.

    Not that it really matters, as long as everyone clearly communicates their point.

    1. “… everyone clearly communicates their point”

      That phrase works fine for me, and rings true, even if technically incorrect!

      … kinda like the phrase “hey, it’s me.”

      “It’s I” sounds insincere and pretentious to me. It’s a phrase a screenwriter would put in a character’s mouth to establish him as a prig. I once had an English teacher who opined, “While ‘It is I’ is correct, you probably should never say it unless it is followed by ‘Don Quijote, Lord of La Mancha.'”

    2. That’s not a universal solution. In only works in that one specific instance and virtually identical ones, like substituting “everybody” in lieu of “everyone.”

      For example, how do you deal with:

      Talking to a boy and a girl: “The rules say either student can submit his credentials to the dean.”

      Talking to a mixed gender class: “Well, I see somebody in here lost his pen.”

      It seems to me that the singular “their” is one that works in every instance.

      Of course “his or her” also works, perhaps even better, so maybe I just have a personal dislike of that phrase.

  4. Normally, I’m against beating a dead horse. But I’ll make an exception when that horse is James Woods.

  5. This begins and ends with James Woods, as usual, being an insufferable dick. Everything else is just window dressing.

    1. Well, yes, he was an ass, but to be fair, he was being a punctilious and correct grammar Nazi, while dictionary.com was just being persnickety, and their comment was not germane to Woods’ (or Woods’s) point.

    1. Style manuals do not agree on that issue, so I ignore the matter.

      Same with the issue of “Woods'” versus “Woods’s.” You can find authoritative sources to defend either position, so I ignore it.

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