Grammar

yo thinking about pronouns (again)

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ Leave a comment

1) I saw a sign in the subway a few days ago.

It said that “a fare increase will be going into affect.”

Sigh.

It was a fancy electronic sign, probably one of many through the system, the sort which I’m sure are all run from a central location. So, as soon as somebody figures out the problem, all of the signs in the system can be fixed simultaneously.

So, it’s better than the new medical facility near me, where “All insurance is accetped.” That’s on a huge printed sign — more difficult and costly to change, I’m sure.

 
2) I did not expect The New Yorker to write about Harley Quinn. Not the quasi-trilogy of movies starring Margot Robbie as the former Dr. Harleen Frances Quinzel — this article is talking about the very violent, very obscene HBO Max cartoon series which stars Kaley Cuoco as Harley and Lake Bell as Poison Ivy, Harley’s friend/lover/partner-in-crime: “The Violent Delights of ‘Harley Quinn’“

The one thing I want to emphasize a bit more than the article does is that Harley and Ivy seem like a real couple — they work through problems as they come up, in healthy and realistic ways, despite the fact that they are both incredibly, and very differently, misanthropic. Ivy prizes plant life and loathes human beings — other than Harley — and Harley is both a violent, unpredictable sociopath and a trained psychiatrist (and those do not overlap, which would be a cliche at this point). When Dr. Quinzel takes over, she is completely focused and empathetic. And Harley’s scenes counseling Bruce Wayne (both as a grown man and as a traumatized boy who has just watched his parents get murdered) are wonderful. (She even attempts to collect a copay at one point, but little Bruce informs her that “rich people insurance doesn’t have copays.”)

One thing I disagree with, of course, is this: “The intricate plotting extends to the playfully dirty but heartfelt romance between Harley and Ivy. Like all love stories, it inevitably dipped in excitement once the characters finally committed to each other.”

Since it was pretty obvious from the first episode that they were getting together eventually (and that it couldn’t be rushed, since Harley was getting out of a very toxic relationship and that wouldn’t be healthy), it was pleasant and fun to watch but not compelling. Staying together is the really interesting part (see the article, and my comments above).

Here’s the Season 4 trailer. Definitely not safe for work.

 
3) This was interesting: “Is ‘Yo’ the Gender-Neutral Pronoun You’ve Been Looking For?“

I remember a friend, years ago (decades, actually) who proposed that “Black English” had advantages over regular English, in that it was more adaptable to changing demands and circumstances. Regular English has various rules and rule books and so on (French and Spanish have this also, and I’m sure other languages do as well).

Here are some quotes from the article linked to above:

This “yo” is a straightforward, gender-neutral third-person pronoun — basically “heesh,” but not as ridiculous sounding. “Yo was tuckin’ in his shirt!” is an example Stotko and Troyer documented. This “yo” did not mean “you,” because the reference was certainly not to someone tucking in someone else’s shirt. A female teacher was handing out papers, and someone remarked — not to the teacher herself — “Yo handin’ out papers.” Someone else used “Yo is a clown” to describe a third party.

Wrap your head around it, and you can see this pronoun is pretty awesome. The interjection “Yo!” has been retooled, so that what started as a way of calling someone has become a way of calling out — i.e., pointing out — someone. The new “yo” means, in its way, “the one whom one ‘yo’s.” And it applies to no gender in particular. Baltimore Black English achieved what mainstream English never has: a gender-neutral pronoun that doesn’t force some other pronoun to moonlight in a new role.

Standard language unites us. But with nonstandard language, nothing — no dictionaries, no tut-tutting by experts — pulls it back from doing what it wants to do. It tends to be built out compared to standard language, “buff” as it were. It should be common knowledge that such variations are of interest not merely because of the cultures they represent but also because of their sheer grammatical intricacy.

The appeal (an appeal) of “yo” is that it feels, and apparently is, organic. Rules and rule books can sometimes work in languages when they are, or are claiming to be, maintaining “proper” or “correct” usage. However, it’s very difficult to change language by setting up new rules, because (as a friend of mine observed once) habit is the most powerful force in the universe, and because it makes people question why they should listen to your rules anyway (and because there’s usually no general agreement, among all the people who feel that a change is needed, about specifically what that change should be).

Philip B. Corbett of the New York Times used to have a wonderful blog called “After Deadline” where he reported on the language used in the Times (rules followed, rules broken, the reasons for the rules, the reasons for changing the rules, etc.) and he used to say that he never set up absolute yes/no rules about things, since that would have made it embarrassingly obvious that people weren’t following his rules anyway.

 
4) I’m terrible with anniversaries and birthdays and occasions & milestones like that (well, I’m not terrible with them — I’m just oblivious to them), so I completely missed the fact that this blog now has over a thousand posts. This one here, when published, will be 1,003. So, let’s have a belated… whatever might be appropriate. Yay.

new language thing! 

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ 2 Comments

I’ve been reading some articles about Game of Thrones recently, though I’ve never read any of the books or seen any episodes of the TV show.

It’s apparently a very complex universe, but it seems to be easier to follow things now, at least in my casual way, because so many of the characters are dead at this point.

(There’s one point that caught my attention recently, given my interest in royal rules of succession: your legal parentage can determine your right to a throne, but it’s your blood, your actual parentage, that may affect whether you can ride a dragon.)

But it was when reading the comments on an AV Club article about Game of Thrones, that I came upon this:

The stress or accent on a word usually varies in a consistent way depending on whether it’s being used as a noun or a verb:

Noun: INcrease “There’s been an increase in the number of students.”
Verb: inCREASE “Numbers are increasing.”

Noun: DIScount “Is there a discount on this?”
Verb: disCOUNT “They discounted the theories.”

What’s better than royal rules of succession? Language things! 

in which they has some opinions, and so do i

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ 2 Comments

A friend sent me this link recently, knowing I’d probably have an opinion or two: “Stylebooks finally embrace the single ‘they’“

Then, a few days later, I saw this (not exactly the same question, but related): “Billions performer challenges the Emmys’ actor/actress binary“

People have been pushing for the “singular they” for a while — as an improvement over the old rule of using male pronouns for individuals of indeterminate gender. And it is an improvement, but my reaction is still: I prefer not to. I don’t use the male pronoun (though I’ve been writing for decades about a character who does 🙂 ) — I rewrite.

This is different, though, than the question of a person who doesn’t identify as “he” or “she” in the first place. I read an article once about someone who didn’t want any pronoun used — so every place where the person was referred to the name was used, rather than a pronoun.

This (the latter) is something more important than a grammatical question, though — I think this is a question of politeness. If a person prefers a particular pronoun — or a particular name, for that matter — that’s what you use. If it results in awkward sentences — and even if it doesn’t — you can insert an editorial note at the beginning explaining the decision.

 
“Style guides, like dictionaries, follow the language, not lead it, and they often accept usage years after it has become embraced by users, if not by language sticklers.”

Yes and no. Chicago draws a very clear distinction between dictionaries — which do indeed report how language is used, often not how it “should” be used — and style manuals. which go somewhat further (not “farther” 🙂 ).

The CMOS website, for example, has a whole section called “Good usage versus common usage.”

 
“And it’s now only a matter of time before the generic singular ‘they’ can come out into the light as well.”

I find this to be an unconvincing analogy. 🙂

That being said, the writer of this article is probably right — I think it’s probably inevitable. However, “careful writers” (to borrow Chicago’s phrase) may still resist, particularly in formal writing. The same way some of us old cranks still resist “contact” as a verb, and the use of “that” to refer to a person, and “presently” to mean “at present, and so on.

And Chicago is “holding the line,” at least for now. So that’s something.

so, a blog post

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ 4 Comments

Well, it’s been a while, obviously. Stuff in real life is particularly challenging right now, and will remain so for at least the next couple of months. Little time for blogging — particularly on any regular schedule.

So, what do I want to focus on, in my more limited time?

Really, I want to get back on track with my current story, “The Bus Station Mystery.” I just listened to the whole thing and made a few very minor changes (fixing bumpy sentences). So, now I’m eager to get on with part six and so on.

I think that will be my main focus for now. I like how it’s shaping up. Like my most recent stories, I think it stands by itself nicely — you could read it without having read anything else of mine before it. I’m really aiming for that these days.

Other than that, I plan to post links. Just one at a time, as they occur to me — rather than what I’ve usually done, which is wait until I have a few and post them together with some connective comments.

For example, there’s this: “A Small Point of Usage Concerning those ‘Alternative Facts,’” in which Mary Norris, the Comma Queen, points out that, whatever the other drawbacks of “alternative facts,” at least the term correctly observes the distinction between “alternate” and “alternative.”

Unlike, for example, “alternate reality.”

Oh, and up there where the links are (assuming you’re on a computer)? There’s a lot of stuff that shouldn’t be there, like “Lost Password” and such. (I seldom see that stuff because I’m usually on mobile.) That’ll get fixed at some point. Probably not soon.

this is what i worry about when i’m writing

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ 2 Comments

I’m going to start posting a new story, for which I don’t have a title yet, but I got hung up on this sentence.

It felt very different than running away from home.

Different from? Different than?

The rule from the Chicago Manual of Style:

different. The phrasing different from is generally preferable to different than {“this company is different from that one”}

But “It felt very different from running away from home” sounded awkward. Too many “froms,” for one thing.

Some authorities argue that people get too hung up on the difference, that “different from” is not that different to (as the British sometimes put it) “different than.” But I’m not above getting hung up on these sorts of differences, even though, as is often pointed out, great and respected writers have used both “than” and “from.”

But then, in several places, I found that an exception is often granted for situations where what follows is a clause rather than a noun or noun phrase. Which is clearly the case with my sentence (though I guess technically what follows is a gerund, which is sort of noun-ish…)

Anyway.

Problem solved!

So, the story is about to start. Then I’ll just have to figure out the title, characters, and plot.

Genre isn’t a problem. It’s a mystery. 🙂

hey, some videos! 

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ 2 Comments

I was struck by two recent Comma Queen videos at the New Yorker site.

The first one is interesting because Ms. Norris emphasizes a different aspect of danglers (dangling participles) than the New York Times style guide does.

The New Yorker rule is that the participal phrase has to modify the subject of the sentence (Ms. Norris gives examples). The rule at the Times is that a modifying phrase at the beginning of a sentence had to be followed immediately by the thing being modified. This is shown in this example from the (late, lamented) After Deadline blog:

A former House member who served as trade representative and budget director under President George W. Bush, his efforts at bipartisanship help him at home.

–This appositive phrase is a dangler. It should be in apposition with “he,” not with “his efforts.”

 
This video talks about whether we should use “who” or “that” when referring to an animal. The “who vs that” rule for people is one of my favorites, so I wanted to check this out.

The end of the video is the best part, though.

 
On another subject, whenever a new superhero movie comes out, people complain (with complete justification) about how the superhero movie world is so boy-centric. But there are five superhero movies centered around a woman, and now there’s going to be a sixth.

I can hardly wait. 🙂