This is a worksheet a colleague and I handed out to our high school writing class today. We asked the students to take ten minutes to look over each sentence and correct any grammatical errors they found. We noted that some sentences may already be grammatically correct.

Driving along the road, the scenery was beautiful.

Susanís clothes were dirty, so she put them in the wash.

At our school, the boyís dorm is called the Barn.

A person should know when they are in the wrong.

ìMe and Samuel are taking a chemistry class,î said Edward.

The wording of the documents have changed.

Whenever the coach or his assistant issue an order, chaos ensues.

ìThe cake is for Mary and I,î said Jane.

One is only as strong as their muscles.

The next subject he took up were the various instances of theft on campus.

Mrs. Cleopatra Brown, along with her husband Ebenezer and her daughter Penelope, are winding up the families vacation in Hawaii.

The team of doctors have treated this disease many times.

The team of doctors have gone home.

The penultimate sentence is fun.

In standard U.S. English, the collective noun "team" is considered singular, so the singular form of the verb is required. Thus, the corrected sentence should read, "The team of doctors HAS gone home."

However, if I'm not mistaken, in British English, collective nouns take the plural form of the verb. So, the sentence is correct as written. I'm not sure if this is true of every collective noun, but I believe I recall seeing the construction "The government have ordered . . ." and "The company have decided . . ." in British usage.

I'm an "American" English speaker, so I could be wrong about British practice.

What say you, grammarian?

I was going to ask the same questions as Bruce! I'm curious to know which alternative you consider correct.

The only grammar lessons I had in (public) high school were in my foreign language class - and in my experience, I wasn't the only one. Once I got to college, I had professors commend my writing, which amazed me - until I learned that my peers couldn't. I still don't think of myself as a particularly good writer, but kudos to you for making your students learn the basics!

Oh, and:
"At our school, the boys' dorm is called the Barn."

According to the Chicago Manual of Style, "mass nouns" may take either a singular or plural verb depending on context.

"As the subject of a sentence, a mass noun usually takes a singular verb {the litigation is varied}. But in a collective sense, it may take either a singular or a plural verb form {the ruling majority is unlikely to share power} {the majority of voters are satisfied}. A singular verb emphasizes the group; a plural verb emphasizes the individual members." (The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. (pp. 148-149, item 5.8)

So either "The team of doctors has/have gone home." may be correct depending on whether you want to emphasize that they all got on the bus together or that they each left separately.

I can't speak to the British, though I know it's different.

The British press that covers Formula 1 uses this construction, which always sounds funny to me:

"Ferrari are testing new tyres."

Then there are some in the American press that cover the NBA:

"The Los Angeles Lakers are ..." But also:
"The Miami Heat is ..."

How did your students do, Erin?

I had fun with both:
ìMe and Samuel are taking a chemistry class,î said Edward.
and
ìThe cake is for Mary and I,î said Jane.

If, in fact, that is what each of the speakers said, the sentence is correct. However, each of those speakers needs lessons in pronoun usage.

These are just the debatable ones.

Driving along the road, the scenery was beautiful.

The introductory adverbial thingie "Driving along the road" looks like it's floating about unmoored. I'd not write that. Clearly, it refers to where the beautiful scenery was encountered, but I'd still not write that.

Susanís clothes were dirty, so she put them in the wash.

Fine by me.

At our school, the boyís dorm is called the Barn.

One boy? If multiple boys live there, it's "the boys' dorm"

A person should know when they are in the wrong.

I would never, ever write or say "A person should know when they..." Mine is rapidly becoming a minority view, though, and I suspect it will lose out within my lifetime to the people who believe that the singular "they" is a good thing. I'd have written "A person should know when he or she is in the wrong."

"Me and Samuel are taking a chemistry class," said Edward.

If that's what Edward said, then it's correctly quoted. However, someone should gently remind Edward that he should use "I" for subjects and "me" for objects. Here, the first person pronoun is being used as a subject -- Edward should have said "I".

The wording of the documents have changed.

Merkin, so I'd write "has changed" here.

Whenever the coach or his assistant issue an order, chaos ensues.

I'd go with "issues an order". It's an "or" which means only one of the two potential subjects will apply. If it'd been "coach and his assistant" then it'd be "issue an order".

"The cake is for Mary and I,î said Jane."

Jane? Meet Edward, above.

One is only as strong as their muscles.

Not sure how this sentence is intended. However, going for the most straightforward meaning, it's got the same problem as the "person...they" example above. I would have written "One is only as strong as his or her muscles."

The next subject he took up were the various instances of theft on campus.

Should be "was the various..."

Mrs. Cleopatra Brown, along with her husband Ebenezer and her daughter Penelope, are winding up the families vacation in Hawaii.

Urk. I'm not sure on this one. I'm going to say that it should be "is winding up" and I'd also go for "the family's vacation" unless they're part of a larger mafioso retreat, in which case it should be "the families' vacation". :)

The team of doctors have treated this disease many times.

It should be "has treated". The verb does not agree with the proximal noun "doctors". The verb agrees with the grammatical subject "team".

The team of doctors have gone home.

The team of doctors has gone home.

"The team of doctors have gone home."

Unless the team of doctors is living on the same home, I think the sentence is correct. In this case, the sentence describes a separate, individual action by each member of the team. Each member is going to a different home.

"The team of doctors have treated this disease many times."

In this context, all the individual actions of the team members constitute one unit of treatment. So in this case, "has" should be used.

Families Vacation is the name of an event, and should have been capitalized.

I ought to know the British conventions for the number of a verb governed by a collective noun, but the reference to Ferrari threw me. Certainly correct/pedantic/old-fashioned British usage dictates a singular verb with a collective common noun: "The team of doctors HAS gone home"; "an unkindness of ravens IS roosting in that tree".
But the position with proper or specific nouns denoting a group is less clear. I think the British can get away with either "Microsoft has released yet another patch" or Microsoft have released yet another patch", but only with an transitive verb. "The navy have become a shadow of their former self" is illiterate gibberish, but "The navy have occupied positions in the gulf" might pass. I've no idea why.

An earlier post commented:
"One is only as strong as their muscles."
should be corrected to:
"One is only as strong as his or her muscles."

This is not correct. The correct sentence is
"One is only as strong as his muscles." The reader knows that the subject "one" is sexually indeterminate so that expression "or her" is just baggage added for political correctness.

The only exception is if the writer (or intended reader) is a lesbian feminist English professor with hairy armpits and a wardrobe from 1973. In this case the correct form is:

"Women, men, and trasnsgendered persons are only as strong as their muscles."

Thank you.

Bill R. wrote: This is not correct. The correct sentence is "One is only as strong as his muscles." The reader knows that the subject "one" is sexually indeterminate so that expression "or her" is just baggage added for political correctness.

And sooth, I did write that way until I got to college, whereupon they beat into me that I was to use "his or her" no matter how ungainly, inelegant, or disturbingly PC I found it. As I was paying the college huge sums of money, I sucked it up and did what they told me.

Unfortunately, since grammar is, in the end, what people actually do rather than what we think they should do, I think that the common, everyday, used-by-actual-humans form is going to be "One is only as strong as their muscles" no matter how much it makes me, personally, cringe.

I agree with you that the universal 'he' is the correct, elegant, and satisfying English of our fathers. That said, I do not enjoy getting into arguments with bleeding-heart liberals or people who think women are empowered by tromping around in the dark shouting about how damn empowered they are. (The very fact that one is ATTENDING a "Take Back the Night" empowerment march thingie is proof positive that one is damn well NOT empowered. The empowered group doesn't need to have marches about being empowered. They just are.) Because I do not like having to defend my pronoun choices to the big girls' blouses of the world, I use the rather more clunky, but fully-inclusive, his-or-her construction.

Weird -- as person with a similar name posting before me... and I agree with teep.

I think using "they" as a 3rd person neuter pronoun is fine, and is becoming the standard use. Formal grammar, after all, is just a bunch of conventions, all of which have changed over time. English no longer has the case endings that existed in Old English (though they do appear in our pronouns - he/him/his, I/me/my, they/them/their); word order now fulfills the function that case endings once did. Most verbs lost the "strong" form and are now weak - again, some verbs like "read" and "hang" retain the archaic forms, but most switched. Using "they" and its related forms works much better as a gender neutral construction than anything else proposed.

Yes, it won't get you to pass standardized tests that exist right now, but give it a couple of generations and I bet it's the standard form.

I'm glad the stilted "his or her" and "his/her" constructions are dying the death they so greatly deserve.

I'm curious what you did with "A person should know when they are in the wrong."

According to this web page, which provides quotes from authors, the singular they/their/them has been used in sentences like that since 14th century.
http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/austheir.html#X1a

In some cases, the singular their construction is used by these authors even when everyone to whom the sentence applies has the same gender.

Actually, Bill R., not only aren't you clever, but you're also incorrect.

The grammar police would say that only this form is correct: "One is only as strong as one's muscles."

Now, if the subject were "a person" -- that is, "A person is only as strong as _______ muscle," then you can use "his" or "her" or "his/her" or, according to the Chicago Manual of Style, "their."

Or you can do the easy thing and just write, "People are only as strong as their muscles."

But if "one" is the subject, "one's" must be the possessive.

And Teep, the correct and elegant English of our Fathers is just plain horse-pucky. As Winston Churchill once said, "Mocking anti-rape marches is something up with which I will not put." Or the great blues artist Skip James, who did away with the possessive altogether, and to striking effect: "I'd rather be the devil than to be that woman man."

That is to say, even our fathers -- or at least the ones who used language in powerful ways and didn't just sit on the couch balancing cheap beer on their guts and complain about the darkies stealing their jobs and the lesbians stealing their women --knew correctness and elegance don't always go together.

Back to the subject at hand: Are we meant to be using an absolute standard of grammar, here? If so, whose? Several folks have pointed out interesting differences in accepted use, so where are the grammar police for your students?

I'm not a linguist, but the prevailing impression I get from linguistic blogs is that they're not fans of prescriptivist grammar. All the cool kids in linguistics appear to be doing descriptivist stuff... this is what people say, this is how people create meaning, here is how people use the language.

I'm sort of torn on the issue, myself. If there isn't *REALLY* a proper way to write and speak, sometimes it's useful to pretend that there is.

While prescriptivist grammar may not be fair, inclusive, or particularly correct from a linguistic standpoint, people make judgments based on how others use language. These judgments have real, economic consequences. In short, speak like the ruling class and you get better jobs, make more money, and have more power. Insofar as these are desireable goals, it's probably worthwhile to learn to sound like The Man.

What's your take on the issue?

While I would agree with Sappho that "One is only as strong as one's muscles." is probably the best possible rendition of that sentiment in third-person, it also has the unfortunate side-effect of making oneself sound like an insufferable toff. It's correct, but not natural. The better approach would be to avoid the third-person entirely in such a case, and rely on the pedestrian, but unstrained, second-person "You are only as strong as your muscles."

Unless, of course, one is TRYING to sound like an insufferable toff.

Sorry, if there are no standards for correct usage, Babel ensues.

David

PS. For the first sentence, I would prefer: "When we were driving along the road, the scenery was beautiful." Or even better, in my opinion: "The scenery was beautiful when we [or whoever] drove down the road."

David, I'd actually prefer "We saw beautiful scenery as we drove down the road." Much more succinct, and eliminating unclear antecedents. In both your examples, the implication to me is that the scenery is no longer beautiful; it was so only while you were driving down the road.

Gosh, this is a lot of fun for someone who only gravitated to the rules of grammar -- though I'm nearly 50, I can't recall ever having taken a class in grammar.

Kris,

re: "A person should know when they are in the wrong."

We could avoid the debate entirely and just ask whether "they" refers to something/someone other than "person." Perhaps a preceding sentence would clear things up.

I was told at one point that English - good old pre-Norman English - used to have three pronouns. The male pronoun and the gender-neutral pronoun were similar enough in sound that they eventually blended and led to the construction of a person being referred to as "he" when the gender was unknown.

The fact that this construction survived until the 20th century is a considerable accomplishment when you realize exactly how many linguistic upheavals English has gone through in the intervening millenium.

Hmm, you might want to visit over at:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/ozarque/

Some very interesting comments about grammar.

Woe is I for all the grammatical errors Erin posted.

If you think grammar is fun (as do I), then you will like the "Transitive Vampire" books by Karen Elizabeth Gordon. (Though I suspect you may know it already.)

"I'm not a linguist, but the prevailing impression I get from linguistic blogs is that they're not fans of prescriptivist grammar. All the cool kids in linguistics appear to be doing descriptivist stuff... this is what people say, this is how people create meaning, here is how people use the language."

I'm not a linguist either, although I majored in the subject as a student. Nevertheless, there's something clearly off about linguists' agitation against prescriptivism, since prescriptivism and the generation of standardised or 'rationalised' grammars is a significant linguistic phenomenon, and one which has been studied in various contexts. Modern German and, I think, Swedish come down to us as the result of a 19th century standardisation into "correct" grammar. Consequently, linguists' dismissal of prescriptivism gives the lie to the pretense that they are merely "descriptivist." Instead, by and large, they've decided that, normatively, one phenomenon they might be describing is *wrong*. Thus, rather than sit back, study it, and let it run its course, they agitate against it whenever it comes up. "Language Mavens" and all that.

I'm a formalist who likes rules. (Yes, grammar and usage are not eternally fixed; they change over time. But the issue is, do we help them along by greasing the skids down the slippery slope with our sloppy usage or resist it as effectively as we can?)

But put my preference for principles aside. Here's a practical argument for sticking closely to the traditional, i.e., formal, rules: Doing so will offend no one, while not doing so will offend those who care about such things.

The exception to my rule is when following the rules threatens to make one sound like the "insufferable toff" referred to above. Avoid that if you can. But on all other occasions most people won't realize that you're speaking/writing correctly because they don't know or really care that much about the differences between correct and incorrect, but those who do care will notice when you stray too far from the well-trod grammatical path.

From occasional visits to England, I believe "The team of doctors have gone home." is the British usage. Now would the same difference between English and American apply to "The wording of the documents have changed."?