Kirk Mahoney . com

I heard a caller say this yesterday on “The Dave Ramsey Show” radio program.

Problem:
The pronoun “him” should not go after “more than” in this sentence.

Explanation:
This sentence is of the form “She makes more than X.”, where ‘X’ defines some amount of money (and optionally when).

The pronoun “him” is not a suitable substitution for ‘X’ because “him” does not define some amount of money.

Suitable substitutions for ‘X’ include:

• “$100,000″;
• “$50,000 annually”;
• “what he makes”.

I believe that the speaker’s use of “him” in place of “what he makes” is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It’s simpler to say one monosyllabic pronoun than to say three words.

Solution:
“She makes more than what he makes.”

I got this in an email message from Skype a couple of days ago.

Problem:
A contraction-forming apostrophe appears where it should not.

Explanation:
The word “it’s” is a contraction of “it is”; the apostrophe signifies the dropping of a letter (the “i” in “is”).

The required word is “its” (not “it’s”) because “its” is the possessive form of “it” (which refers to “Skype”).

Confusing “it’s” and “its” is a common English blunder.

A simple way to remember that “its” is the possessive form of “it” — a third-person pronoun — is to recognize that “his” is the possessive form of “he” — another third-person pronoun — and that neither “his” nor “its” has a possessive apostrophe.

Solution:
“Skype — social networking at its best”

I saw a hilarious TV clip about why this is wrong.

Problem:
The number of the verb does not match the number of the subject.

Explanation:
The pronoun “none” means not one.

The pronoun “one” is singular and takes the third-person, singular form of “work”, which is “works”.

Seeing this, we get “Not one of them works.”

Converting “Not one” back to “None” gives us the solution.

I believe that the problematic sentence is an example of speakers and writers being distracted by the nearness of the verb to the pronoun “them”, which is plural.

Solution:
“None of them works.”

I heard this during an excellent performance of Othello over the weekend.

Problem:
I’m not sure about William Shakespeare’s time, but “myself” by today’s standard is not the right pronoun for this sentence.

Explanation:
At the risk of treading sacred ground, I must say that I had to wince when I heard “myself will be your surgeon” in the Alley Theatre’s excellent production of Shakespeare’s Othello over the weekend.

I’m not blaming the Alley production company. According to Scribd, the actor who played the part of Othello — David Rainey — said it exactly according to the script.

Perhaps Shakespeare wrote this line as shorthand for “Sir, for your hurts, I myself will be your surgeon: …” and simply left out the nominative singular pronoun “I” because it was the style of the time.

It’s correct to follow “I” with “myself” when one wants to emphasize the “I” (ditto for “you” followed by “yourself”, “he” followed by “himself”, etc.).

In other words, one can emphasize a nominative pronoun by immediately following it with its counterpart reflexive pronoun (e.g., “I myself” or “he himself”).

However, it’s incorrect to use a reflexive pronoun as a substitute for its counterpart nominative pronoun.

Solution:
“Sir, for your hurts, I will be your surgeon.” or “Sir, for your hurts, I myself will be your surgeon.”

Huge numbers of people use “they” when they should use “he” or “she” instead.

Problem:
The pronoun “they” is not a synonym for the pronouns “he” or “she”.

Explanation:
The pronoun “they” is a plural, third-person pronoun. For example: When the customers called, they complained about having to press several buttons to speak to an agent.

The pronoun “he” is a singular, third-person, masculine pronoun. For example: When the customer called, he complained about having to press several buttons to speak to an agent.

The pronoun “she” is a singular, third-person, feminine pronoun. For example: When the customer called, she complained about having to press several buttons to speak to an agent.

Unfortunately, many people erroneously will use “they” as if it were a synonym for “he” or “she”: When the customer called, they complained about having to press several buttons to speak to an agent.

The problem with this approach is that “the customer” is singular whereas “they” — which refers to “the customer” — is plural.

There are four possible solutions to this problem, which arises when the speaker or writer does not know the sex of the subject:

1. Use “he” instead of “they”.
2. Use “she” instead of “they”.
3. Use “he or she” instead of “they”.
4. Reword the sentence to avoid having to use a pronoun.

Some feminists object to solution #1, even though the use of “he” as a neuter pronoun was the standard in English (American and otherwise) for decades, if not centuries.

Others object to solution #2, even though some feminists see this as getting even for the long history of solution #1.

Still others object to solution #3. They see it as stilted or awkward, especially when several such sentences exist in a paragraph or set of paragraphs.

Solution #4 suffers from none of these objections, so this is the one that I recommend. For example: The calling customer complained about having to press several buttons to speak to an agent.

Solution:
Use “he” when one knows that the subject is male. Use “she” when one knows that the subject is female. Reword the sentence to avoid having to use a pronoun, when one does not know the subject’s sex.

I heard this on a BET television program.

Problem:
Many wonder whether “him” or “his” is correct in sentences such as this one.

Explanation:
The present participial phrase “singing with the choir” acts as an adjective to modify “him” in “I’m worried about him singing with the choir.” To prove this, we can remove the participial phrase and retain the sense of the sentence: “I’m worried about him.”

In contrast, if we replace “him” with “his” in the sentence, then “singing with the choir” may not be removed. That is, “I’m worried about his.” makes no sense; the possessive pronoun “his” requires the gerund phrase “singing with the choir” or another object.

Summarizing,

• “him” makes “singing with the choir” act as a present participial phrase;
• “his” makes “singing with the choir” act as a gerund phrase.

In other words, “him” and “his” are equally correct but have different effects.

Putting this summary in non-grammatical terms, we get the solution.

Solution:
Use “him” when you want to focus the attention on the person. Use “his” when you want to focus the attention on the action performed by the person.

I heard someone say this recently.

Problem:
The number of the possessive pronoun does not match the number of the subject.

Explanation:
“Each of us” is singular (the speaker is considering “us” one at a time), so the possessive pronoun in front of “own style” should be singular.

The possessive pronoun “our” is plural and therefore does not match the number of the subject (“Each of us”).

I believe that the speaker of the statement, in ignoring the number of “Each of us” (singular) in favor of the number of “us” (plural), was distracted by the fact that “us” and “our” usually go together (are both first-person plural pronouns) and the proximity of “us” to the possessive pronoun in the statement.

“Each of us has their own style.” would be incorrect, too, because “their” is plural and also is inconsistent with the singularity of “Each of us” (the subject of the sentence).

Given that the statement refers to a group of people, the correct possessive pronouns would be the singular ones “his” and/or “her”. The mental impediment of combining “us” with “his” or “her” in a statement seems to be that “us” is in the first person whereas “his” and “her” are in the third person. One must appreciate that “Each of” in front of “us” forces the listener to consider the third-person individuals in the group.

Solutions:
“Each of us has his own style.” — for an all-male group
“Each of us has her own style.” — for an all-female group
“Each of us has his or her own style.” — for a mixed group

I heard this on National Public Radio.

Problem:
The pronoun “ourself” is nonstandard.

Explanation:
The pronoun “ourself” has only a couple of entries in most dictionaries. The first entry typically says used as a reflexive pronoun in royal proclamations. The second entry typically says that “ourself” is nonstandard.

In other words, “ourself” in most situations is an incorrect replacement for the reflexive pronoun “ourselves”. The word “ourself” is incorrect because “our” is plural and takes the plural “selves” (instead of the singular “self”).

I suspect that the increasing use of “ourself” outside of royal proclamations is due to increasing misuse of the reflexive pronouns “himself”, “herself” and “yourself” in non-reflexive situations. For example, many people have become accustomed to saying “yourself” when the correct pronoun is “you” instead.

Solution:
“Ourselves”

I often see “which” where “that” is appropriate.

Problem:
The pronoun “which” is not interchangeable with the pronoun “that”.

Explanation:
Some speakers and writers tend to favor “which” over “that” because they believe that “which” sounds more elegant or sophisticated than “that”. Unfortunately, most of the time they should use “that” instead of “which”.

When used to introduce a clause, these two pronouns are not interchangeable. Only one of these examples is correct: Nobody likes a cat that scratches. vs. Nobody likes a cat which scratches. The first example is correct.

One way to remember which pronoun to use (no pun intended) is to see whether you can put the clause inside commas. You would not write Nobody likes a cat, which scratches. because you need the scratching behavior to identify the cat. The comma in this example tells the reader that the clause is unnecessary, which is not your intent. The clause is necessary to identify the cat. You should instead write Nobody likes a cat that scratches. (notice the lack of commas).

Here are two more examples, and each shows correct use of “that” or “which”:

• Joe’s car, which could go from zero to sixty miles per hour in three seconds, won the contest for the fastest car on the drag strip.
• The car that won the contest for the fastest car on the drag strip was Joe’s car.

Notice that we can remove the “which” clause and its commas without destroying the significant point of the first example: Joe’s car won the contest for the fastest car on the drag strip.

Solution:
Use “that” when when you must keep the (“that”) clause to maintain the point of the sentence. Use “which” when you can maintain the point of the sentence after dropping the (“which”) clause. Also, make sure that “that” clauses do not go inside commas and that “which” clauses do go inside commas.

I heard this on a TV show.

Problems:
1. The verb doesn’t match the subject.
2. Double-negation nullifies the speaker’s intended message.

Explanation:
1. The pronoun “she” does not go with the verb “do”, even if the verb is in a contraction with “not”. The pronoun “she” requires “does” (or “doesn’t”), as in “She does …” (or “She doesn’t …”).
2. The “not” in the contraction combined later in the sentence with the “no” in “no more” leads to a sentence with a double-negative. Assuming that the speaker wanted to tell the listener that the third-party female (to which the pronoun “she” referred) no longer loved the listener, “no” should have been replaced with “any” in the sentence.

I believe that there are two forces that led to this double-trouble sentence.

The first force is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” hypothesis: the single-syllable “don’t” is simpler to say than the double-syllable “doesn’t”.

The second force, I believe, is the influence on American English today of a relatively large population of native-Spanish speakers. If one uses a negative Spanish pronoun, adjective or adverb after a verb, the verb must be preceded by “no” (which means the same as “no” in English) or another negative pronoun or adjective.

For example, the pronoun “nada” in Spanish means nothing, and “encontró” means (he/she/it) found.

So to say “He found nothing.” in Spanish requires us to write “Él no encontró nada.” or more simply “No encontró nada.” — NOT “Encontró nada.” (or “Él encontró nada.”), which native-English speakers expect when first learning Spanish.

In other words, the above Spanish construction could be called a double-negative that is non-self-negating, and the construction is the correct way to write or say a such a negative in Spanish. In contrast and as far as I know, all double-negative constructions in English ARE self-negating.

As more native-Spanish speakers in the U.S. learn English, they will tend to use — mistakenly — (self-negating) double-negatives in English because (non-self-negating) double-negatives are a required part of their native language.

Solution:
“She doesn’t love you any more.”