Whew, boy! Do I have to overcome a long-held prejudice?

I was looking up a word online and bumped into this video about third-person possessive pronouns--his, her, and them.

As Emily Brewster, an associate editor at Merriam-Webster notes, Facebook recently changed its software so we should no longer see those (drive-me-crazy) notices like, "Noah Webster commented on their own photo." And it's about time, too, from my perspective! After all, Facebook knows whether you are male or female.

But then Emily gets into some areas where I myself have struggled--the sentences that require a male or female pronoun if you want to be grammatically correct, but that require both the male and female pronoun if you want to be gender-sensitive (and I have bought into the importance of gender sensitivity since I was in college, at least).

The problem is, as Emily notes, one can wind up with monstrous sentences like, "Everyone should do his or her best in whatever situations in which he or she finds himself or herself." (!!!!)

Of course, there are often simple workarounds like, "People should do their best," or, "You should do your best." But not always.

And as Emily suggests, maybe "Everyone should just do their best in the situations in which they find themselves."

And the locus for such a (to my training) grammatically awkward sentence?

How about the King James Bible? 1611 edition. Matthew 18:35: "...if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses."

Yipes!

I have watched other Merriam-Webster videos over the last many years. I find them fascinating. Maybe you will, too. Check them out!

RIP

[That title is supposed to mean "Rest in Peace," not "rip a CD."]

Image via Wikipedia I had a question about grammar and I went to my old favorite grammar website, Charles Darling's The Guide to Grammar and Writing--otherwise fondly remembered by me as Ask Grammar (including a hacked picture of Whistler's mother in a rocking chair).

I was shocked to see a notice at the top of the home page:

Dedicated to the memory of Dr. Charles Darling.

Whoa!

I wrote to Dr. Darling several times over the years to ask him detailed questions of grammar. He always responded with grace and kindness.

And now he's dead.

Indeed, he's been dead for over a year, based on a blog post I found on eNotes.com memorializing his passing on July 31, 2007!

I guess it's "just" so shocking partially because I counted Dr. Darling as a kind of friend, even though we never met. And here this acquaintance of mine is dead . . . and has been dead for so long . . . and I didn't know.

There's something that feels hollow about that. As if I should have known, though I don't know why.

What bums me out even more: I have been unable to find out anything more about him. Not even the date of his death or, really, the cause. (The author of the blog article notes, "At one point an announcement asked for patience [in answering questions] as Dr. Darling was recovering from surgery. During my last visit, a new page announced his passing.")

I thought the web is supposed to be so useful for finding out just about anything. But not so. Some events and some people go unremarked . . . though they are truly significant.

I would like to echo the sentiments of Carla, the author of the blog post on eNotes.com: "Rest in peace, Charles Darling. And thank you."