| Eben made many corrections on students' papers involving number-agreement. For example, "Why does everyone ignore their passions?," as opposed to, say, "Why does everyone ignore (his) / (her) / (his or her) passions?"
I was curious what Eben and others had to say about this construction. Unlike a mere typo, this construction comes out in people's papers because it's common in colloquial speech. But more than that, I would say that it has now achieved a status of sounding correct to native American English ears. And I would even go so far as to say that it is close to having achieved a "correct" status in written English prose, if it is not there already. Eben clearly disagrees with this proposition. My questions are: |