http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-party_state

4/5/2007 9:08:44 PM

Quote :

"I love these sarcastic but stupid responses from liberals when their nutjobs are called out."

Because the whole thing is obsured and not worth discussing. No professor from NC State was being "called out" except by poor excuses of anecdotal evidence.

How's this one: "If you don't like the way things are then you can geeeeet out!!!1"

4/6/2007 12:03:16 AM

Quote :

"obsured"

WTF, MATE? the word is "ABSURD"

Quote :

"You shouldn't have been referring to a single, hypothetical person in an English paper, by the way...it's frowned upon by many."

I don't see how one can frown on it when there are clear cases where it has to be used. For instance:
"If a person wants to kill another person, then he should be ready for the consequences."

Tell me any way that such a sentence could be written without the the word "he?" That's not the best example I can come up with.

4/6/2007 12:48:24 AM

^ Concerning the earlier post about "he" versus "they" in an academic essay, first, if you were referring to a "single [emphasis added] hypothetical person," the pronoun should have been singular. Second, the professor probably used sexist language to justify the poor grade. The latest style manuals from both APA (p. 66) and MLA (p. 60) recommend avoiding sexist bias in writing, and nearly all modern style manuals address the subject of avoiding bias concerning age, economic class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, political or religious beliefs, race, or sex.

When writing in any setting, one should use either "he" and "she" or their equivalent pronouns or remove the pronoun altogether. For example: "Each student should bring his or her textbooks to class" (good); "All students should bring their textbooks to class" (better); "Each student should bring textbooks to class" (best--no pronoun or pronouns). In these scenarios, the textbook to be brought to class would not be ambiguous.

In any event, I am not defending the grade given by or the approach of the professor in question. A grade of "F" is absurd for such a mistake; some red ink and a minor point deduction--if that--would have been sufficient. Unfortunately, you likely encountered a militant feminist.

[Edited on April 6, 2007 at 3:48 AM. Reason : .]

4/6/2007 3:43:56 AM

Quote :

""If a person wants to kill another person, then he should be ready for the consequences.""

"If a person wants to kill another person, they should be ready for the consequences."

your original example was grammatically worse than my supposedly PC version.

why would you ever switch from gender neutral to gender specific in the context of one sentence, anyhow?

4/6/2007 3:45:37 AM

^ Incorrect.

Quote :

"If a person wants to kill another person, then he or she should be ready for the consequences."

First, the sex of the would-be killer is unknown. Second, the would-be killer is singular.

Just for shits and giggles: The consequences to the person to be murdered would equal one: death. But after the person to be killed is dead, how can that half of "they" know consequences or anything else, for that matter? Consequences in this scenario relate to the actor only--the killer.






[Edited on April 6, 2007 at 4:06 AM. Reason : .]

4/6/2007 3:55:43 AM

"they" can be, and is, used as third person singular.

Quote :

"Robert Burchfield, in the Third Edition of Fowler’s Modern English Usage, says, “It begins to look as if the use of an indefinite third person singular is now passing unnoticed by standard speakers (except those trained in traditional grammar).” Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage remarks that “They, their, them have been used continuously in singular reference for about six centuries, and have been disparaged in such use for about two centuries. Now the influence of social forces is making their use even more attractive.” Bryan Garner is more equivocal: “Depending on how you look at it, this is either one of the most frequent blunders in modern writing or a godsend that allows us to avoid sexism.”"

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-the2.htm

famous literary examples: http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/austheir.html

wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they







[Edited on April 6, 2007 at 4:13 AM. Reason : ]

4/6/2007 4:05:56 AM

^ In this scenario, you and the others shouldn't be concerned about the person (I, you, they). "[P]erson" (the killer) is singular--period--so that person has to be either a "he" or a "she"; the person cannot be a "they." Does that make sense?

I don't care how furiously you Wiki or Google, I have a firm grasp of this subject. "Person" is a singular word and "they" and "their" are plural. Deal with it.

I can quote Strunk and White, Barbara Wallraff, or numerous other manuals and writing books. But it is getting late--I'm sorry, but you're wrong again.

PS: The geniuses writing about saving us from sexist language, did they ever consider simply removing the pronoun as I did in my example? Apparently, they are not that learned.


[Edited on April 6, 2007 at 4:23 AM. Reason : .]

4/6/2007 4:10:02 AM

^ i understand what you're trying to say, but youre missing the point.

"they" is an acceptable alternative for third-person singular in the english language.

its even becoming preferred for gender neutrality.

your way is traditionally correct, im not arguing that.

my way is preferred amongst many people who study the english language.

AARONBURO'S example, in any event, would be bad grammar no matter how you look at it.

4/6/2007 4:18:10 AM

^ Those people that study the English language are called etymologists and in many cases linguists. I do this type of thing--editing and writing--on a weekly basis at the graduate level. In addition, exploring syntax and solecisms is one of my hobbies; my shelves are filled with the type of books that I have described. Trust me--for once--I know what I'm talking about.

I mean, people have said that one can't start a sentence with a conjunction or end a sentence with a preposition. Both positions are largely rubbish. Don't believe everything Wiki tells you, man. And I am not missing the point.

PS: Please don't use "amongst."



[Edited on April 6, 2007 at 4:37 AM. Reason : .]

4/6/2007 4:32:06 AM

Now you look here. just because I have to look up WTF "solecism" means, doesn't mean I don't know what I'm talking about, k?

and i know not to rely on Wikipedia as source material. I threw it in for an added reference. We can just stick with the Fowler’s Modern English Usage and Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage and the Oxford English Dictionary for authority if you like.

Maybe we can also rely on the authority of a few authors, such as Jane Austen, Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, the King James Bible, The Spectator, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Frances Sheridan, Oliver Goldsmith, Henry Fielding, Maria Edgeworth, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, William Makepeace Thackeray, Sir Walter Scott, George Eliot [Mary Anne Evans], Charles Dickens, Mrs. Gaskell, Anthony Trollope, John Ruskin, Robert Louis Stevenson, Walt Whitman, George Bernard Shaw, Lewis Carroll, Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton, W. H. Auden, Lord Dunsany, George Orwell, and C. S. Lewis.

all of these references use "they", "them", and "their" as an an indefinite third person singular.

obviously, removing the pronoun entirely is "the best" way to correctly avoid sexist language, if possible. but it cant always be easily removed.

and using the somewhat long winded "he or she", or "his or her" is technically correct.

but "they", "them", "their" as an indefinite third person singular is also correct, has been in recorded english usage for over 600 years








[Edited on April 6, 2007 at 6:59 AM. Reason : ]

4/6/2007 6:55:49 AM

now granted i lean heavily to the left, but if you think the majority of professors on this campus are spewing some manner of left wing agenda, then you were probably to stupid to participate in or understand the lecture. in dozens of CHASS courses i NEVER had a professor that would try to stifle an opinion.

4/6/2007 8:37:32 AM

Quote :

"AARONBURO'S example, in any event, would be bad grammar no matter how you look at it. "

unfortunately, it's not bad grammar, because "he" is indefinite in that instance. It's perfectly legit.

and, the teacher that gave me an F on the paper was a male. how's that for a militant feminist? Although, he did mention that Mike O'Cain hit him in the nuts with a tennis ball once and didn't check to see if he was OK. The teacher was cool overall, except for this one instance of stupidity.

4/6/2007 11:52:22 AM

Quote :

"I still remember getting an F on an english paper my freshman year for writing "he" instead of "they" to refer to a single hypothetical person. I guess using proper grammar and English is no longer acceptable in an English class"

the simplest way I've gotten around this problem is to have males write she and females write he.

4/6/2007 12:23:12 PM

^jesus christ, how hard is it to pick one word and stick with it? other languages use the masculine pronoun for the neutral as well. are there problems with "omg but what if it is really la instead of lo omg it is sexist it should be lo o la?"

out of he, she, they..he is the shortest. since it is also singular, the meaning of the statement won't be obscured. stupid people. stop arguing about this and that and everything else. he is grammatically correct. they is a skewing of the politically correct "he or she." pc is not always that important.


now get back to the topic at hand.

[Edited on April 6, 2007 at 1:38 PM. Reason : bswgufioljdsolurwhngouwjfmweg]

4/6/2007 1:37:40 PM

Descriptivists vs. prescriptivists, to the death.

Irregardless of who beats who, everyone loses their marbles.

4/6/2007 2:12:59 PM

wow...a thread about...grammar

4/6/2007 2:15:26 PM

^^regardless

4/6/2007 3:37:29 PM

bttt

i haven't really noticed a big bias one way or the other. but i've mainly taken engineering classes.

i'd say it's likely that the math profs i've recently (one an aged hippie, the other french) are likely liberal, but their liberalness hasn't really come into class at all. the closest thing to a political thing anyone has said in a class of mine had to do with global warming. and even that was pretty much harmless.

4/6/2007 7:15:12 PM

I never noticed it much here, but then again I never took a bunch of sissyfied classes either. The english I took was technical writing, which was absurd but innocuous. I suppose the 300-level history course on modern science was very revisionist and somewhat political, but given the manifest ignorance of the professor I had it didn't bother me much. However, I must say in all the liberal artsy courses I took at NCSU I typically gave a term paper saying everything in this class is garbage and here are the counter-examples to prove it. I never suffered grade-wise from my rebellion.

I have less fond memories of my freshman English courses I took elsewhere. I would not assume that
I would have been granted such liberty in those courses. English by its nature is subjective so you can easily persecute others with beliefs that differ.

4/6/2007 7:36:17 PM

Quote :

"aaronburro: I don't see how one can frown on it when there are clear cases where it has to be used. For instance: "If a person wants to kill another person, then he should be ready for the consequences." Tell me any way that such a sentence could be written without the the word "he?" That's not the best example I can come up with."

It's frowned upon because thoughts that involve hypothetical people tend to come off as fluffy or unsure. Not always, but most of the time. And since you said it was in your English classes, I assumed you were talking about papers you had written about literature, and in that case, there's definitely no need to speaking about hypotheticals.

Anyway, a better wording for your example:

The punishment for homicide should be [whatever you think the punishment should be].

Not fluffy, not vague. Straight up and to the point.

[Edited on April 6, 2007 at 7:50 PM. Reason : sss]

4/6/2007 7:50:19 PM

Quote :

"Unfortunately, you likely encountered a militant feminist."

hooksaw

First, I posted "likely." Second, one does not have to be a woman to be a "militant feminist"--to think in such a way itself reveals a sexist bias.

To joe_schmoe: Commas should be placed inside closing quotation marks:

Quote :

"but "they", [sic] "them", [sic] "their" as an indefinite third person singular is also correct, has been in recorded english usage for over 600 years"

BTW, in this country, slavery was practiced for a long time, too. But that didn't make it right, did it?

4/7/2007 1:26:05 AM

^ thanks for the pedantic yet marginally helpful lesson about commas.


anyhow look here, hook. youre a smart guy, right?

i mean, you took the GRE, im sure.

so... you should have like a passing ability in logic, yes?

okay, good. now pay close attention.

you see, when I talk about "english language usage" and "600 years of literary evidence" and i cite major modern English Language usage lexicons, and I further reference around 20 of some of the greatest authors in the English language...

... with my point being centered about the use of a certain word as an "indefinite third person singular" ...

and then your only response is to say "Slavery was wrong"...

do you have any clue as to what this is an example of?

do you? hmmm?

any clue, whatsoever?

now do you still wonder why i suspect youre not really a grad student?? because, i mean, i would *hope* that a grad student in CHASS at NC State just wouldn't be that fucking stupid.

it's no wonder the chapel hill kids make fun of us. so, please. i'm begging you. stop. seriously. just stop it.

because all you're doing is serving to devalue our degrees.






[Edited on April 7, 2007 at 2:37 AM. Reason : ]

4/7/2007 2:30:26 AM

Oh good grief let it die already. Don't feed the troll.

4/7/2007 6:08:53 AM

wow this is bullshit, although i believe it happens are a few universities i've never experienced it and i've had a wide range of classes

and campuses tend to be more liberal because it's the point in most people's lives where they actually have a chance to learn new things, try new activities, and meet a much more diverse group of people without family clamping down on them

4/7/2007 10:48:10 AM

Campuses tend to be more liberal because their far left philosophy will not fly in the real world so these professors have no choice other than to either teach or make next to nothing working for a nonprofit organization. So they sit around, pontificate about their utopias, poison the minds of young impressionable youth, and generally do nothing.

4/7/2007 11:19:20 AM

some of these comments are pretty amazing. do any of you actually go to college, or did you just spend 1 semester here then go read a lot of David Horowitz?

4/7/2007 11:22:52 AM

I got my degree from here.

There's a reason why these leftwing biases aren't generally found in the real world. Lots of communist and socialist holdovers still cling to their failed beliefs on many college campuses, including NC State.

4/7/2007 11:32:17 AM

how do you equate liberal with far left???

and if it doesn't "fly in the real world" then why does the real world leave them to educate the future generations?

idiot

4/7/2007 11:46:01 AM

The real world doesn't dictate who gets hired where, although the opportunities for your liberal heroes in academia are few which leads to an unusually high number of them teaching or delivering pizzas.

4/7/2007 11:57:19 AM

so no one who works for a living is liberal? no one?

which would you rather I post. the number of people who support things like universal health care and a rise in the minimum wage? or how about the political thoughts of warren buffett and bill gates?

4/7/2007 1:18:37 PM

Quote :

"Wlfpk4Life: [university professors] sit around, pontificate about their utopias, poison the minds of young impressionable youth, and generally do nothing."

DEY TUK UR JOBS!!!!1





jesus christ already. do you take your talking points straight from RushLimbaugh.Com ?

have you ever tried to have an original thought?

seriously.

go re-read some of the stupid shit you post. you're a fucking caricature.






[Edited on April 7, 2007 at 9:45 PM. Reason : ]

4/7/2007 9:43:57 PM

its not rush, its david horowitz

4/7/2007 9:53:17 PM

ok, but ive heard the same sentiments on Rush's radio show since at least 15 years now.

4/7/2007 9:56:56 PM

by that logic, has anyone had an original thought in the last few years? all the shit everybody spews out isnt original...its been said before by others

4/7/2007 10:00:28 PM

Probably not. People just pick and chose what they want to hear and trumpet it as gospel.

4/7/2007 11:22:16 PM

sure i just think dismissing any argument someone makes simply because they've heard it elsewhere is pretty absurd

if i say "the sun is hot" do you say "i've heard that elsewhere therefore you are dumb"

4/7/2007 11:24:12 PM

Only if you present "the sun is hot" as your original idea.

4/7/2007 11:34:05 PM

when people post, do they usually clarify with "this is my original idea"?

4/7/2007 11:36:09 PM

>.<

4/7/2007 11:37:51 PM

Not if it is considered common knowledge. If I prompted something that I know to be true like "the earth is actually cold if viewed from space" then you might ask "O rly, weatherboy" and then I'd have to drum up my MEA 311 (I think it was) notes or find something comparible on teh internets. But it isn't by any means my original idea.

[Edited on April 7, 2007 at 11:41 PM. Reason : Here comes Webster. >.<]

4/7/2007 11:41:29 PM

thats fine but do you have to clarify anything not common knowledge as either being your own original idea or something you have to reference? just seems like one of the many reasons so many threads get derailed...nitpicking about bullshit

4/7/2007 11:43:26 PM

Or out of curiosity like when I asked for you to dig up the 3% human contribution to CO2 which you so graciously found.

But yeah, nitpicking can be a pain in the ass and it becomes a battle over grammar, spelling and vernacular.

4/7/2007 11:47:22 PM

Quote :

"But yeah, nitpicking can be a pain in the ass and it becomes a battle over grammar, spelling and vernacular."

did someone call?

4/8/2007 3:48:54 AM

joe_troll, I hope you have a blessed Easter!

[Edited on April 8, 2007 at 10:14 AM. Reason : ]

4/8/2007 10:14:17 AM

thanks.

you christians are so sweet.

4/8/2007 2:34:09 PM

Well they had to be doing something other than teaching us how to intelligently argue a point if this thread is any indication.

4/9/2007 10:52:32 AM