Plain Words (27 page)

(11)
They
for
he
or
she

It is common in speech, and not unknown in serious writing, to use
they
or
them
as the equivalent of a singular pronoun of common sex, as in: ‘Each insisted on their own point of view, and so the marriage came to an end'. This is stigmatised by some authorities as a usage grammatically indefensible. The Judge ought, they would say, to have explained that ‘He insisted on his own point of view and
she on hers'. Jespersen says about this that ‘In the third person it would have been very convenient to have a common-sex pronoun, but as a matter of fact English has none', and that we must therefore use one of three ‘makeshift expedients'. These he exemplifies as follows:

(
a
) ‘Nobody prevents you, do they?' (Thackeray, in
Pendennis
); ‘God send everyone their heart's desire' (Shakespeare,
Much Ado About Nothing
).

A writer of formal English might be wise for the present not to be tempted by the convenience of using
they
or
their
as a singular common-sex pronoun, though necessity may eventually force it into the category of wholly accepted idiom. Meanwhile whatever justification there may be for it, there can be no excuse for this practice when only one sex is referred to, as in,

The female manipulative jobs are of a type to which by no means everyone can adapt themselves with ease.

There is no reason why
herself
should not have been written, instead of
themselves
.

Note.
Since Gowers wrote these remarks, the use of
they
and
them
as singular pronouns has become so widespread that his earlier quotation about the theft of a chicken (used to illustrate ambiguous antecedents of pronouns) might strike the modern reader as doubly opaque:

Mr F. saw a man throw something from his pockets to the hens on his farm, and then twist the neck of one of them when they ran to him.

Did all the chickens dash over, whereupon a single unlucky bird paid the price, or did a sole, suicidal chicken run to the man with pockets? There is no doubt that by ‘
they
ran', the original author of this sentence meant all the hens; but a modern speaker and indeed writer might well say ‘one of them when they ran to
him' meaning a single chicken. It nevertheless remains safer in formal English to treat as incorrect, still, a remark such as, ‘The reader may toss their book aside'. And it is inexcusably slack that Part 10 on the application form for a United Kingdom passport should carry this isolated sentence: ‘If a countersignature is needed, they must fill in this section after the rest of the form has been filled in'. ~

(
b
) ‘The reader's heart (if he or she have any) …' (Fielding,
Tom Jones
).

The Ministry of Labour and National Service have adopted a new device derived from this second expedient. It is ugly, and suitable only for forms:

Each worker must acknowledge receipt by entering the serial number of the supplementary coupon sheet issued to him/her in column 4 and signing his/her name in column 5.

Note. Him/her
,
his/hers
and
he/she
—let alone
s/he
—have not ceased to be ugly devices.
He or she
,
him or her
, etc., may sometimes get a writer out of a hole, but repeated use of this expedient will render the best prose inelegant. ~

(
c
) ‘He that hath ears to hear, let him hear' (Authorized Version).

Note.
About this third expedient, where
he
is made to stand for anyone and everyone (‘the reader may toss his book aside'), Gowers said no more in 1954 than that it was ‘for the present' preferable to expedients (
a
) and (
b
). He still thought so when he came to revise Fowler in 1965 (using
they
and
them
, he said, set his teeth on edge). But he now described using
he
as a ‘risk', and removed a sentence from the original book, of 1926, in which Fowler disparaged as a ‘sectional' interest the efforts of various ‘ladies' to make English more neutral. Gowers added to his edition of Fowler the following sentence (from a Civil Service document), with a note conceding that the all-embracing
his
and
him
were used in it with a ‘boldness surprising':

There must be opportunity for the individual boy or girl to go as far as his keenness and ability will take him.

This sentence may appear particularly ridiculous, but it is logically no more so than ‘the reader will probably throw his book in the bin'. The formula Gowers called a risk decades ago has become much riskier since, and a sentence such as the one above of a boldness surprising is worth rewriting (here, using the plural) to stop it sounding perverse:

Boys and girls must have the opportunity to go as far as their individual keenness and ability will take them. ~

(12)
What

What
, in the sense of
that which
, or
those which
, is an antecedent and relative combined. Because it may be either singular or plural in number, and either subjective or objective in case, it needs careful handling.

Fowler says that its difficulties of number can be solved by asking the question, ‘What does it stand for?'

What is needed is more rooms.

Here Fowler would say that
what
means
the thing that
, and the singular verb is right. On the other hand, in the sentence ‘He no doubt acted with what are in his opinion excellent reasons',
are
is right because
what
is equivalent to
reasons that
. But this is perhaps over-subtle, and there is no great harm in treating
what
as a plural in such a construction whenever the complement is plural (‘what is needed are more rooms'). It may be thought to sound more natural.

Because
what
may be subjective or objective, writers may find themselves making the same word do duty in both cases, a practice condemned by grammarians. For instance:

This was what came into his head and he said without thinking.

What
here is being made to do duty both as the subject of
came
and as the object of
said
. If we want to be punctiliously grammatical we will write this:

This is what (subjective) came into his head and what (objective) he said without thinking.

Preferably, we will say:

This is what came into his head, and he said it without thinking.

(13)
Which

The
New Yorker
, in an issue of 1948, quoted a request sent to the
Philadelphia Bulletin
:

My class would appreciate a discussion of the wrong use of
which
in sentences like ‘He wrecked the car which was due to his carelessness'.

The
Bulletin
's reply, also quoted by the
New Yorker
, was:

The fault lies in using
which
to refer to the statement
‘He wrecked the car'
. When
which
follows a noun it refers to that noun as its antecedent. Therefore in the foregoing sentence it is stated that the car was due to his carelessness, which is nonsense.

What, the
New Yorker
wanted to know, was nonsense here? Carelessness? Which shows how dangerous it is to dogmatise about the use of
which
with an antecedent consisting not of a single word but of a phrase.
Punch
has provided an illustration of the same danger (from a novel):

Mrs Brandon took the heavy piece of silk from the table, unfolded it and displayed … an altar cloth of her own exquisite embroidery … upon which, everyone began to blow their nose …

The fact is that this is a common and convenient usage, but one that needs to be handled with discretion to avoid ambiguity or awkwardness.

Here it is unnecessary:

The required statement is in course of preparation and will be forwarded as soon as official records are complete, which will be in about a week's time.

The sentence can be improved by omitting the words
which will be
, thereby getting rid of the relative altogether.

The long delay may make it inevitable for the authorities to consider placing the order elsewhere which can only be in the United States which is a step we should be anxious to avoid.

Here the writer has used
which
in this way twice in a single sentence, and shown how awkward its effect can be. It would be better to put a full stop after
elsewhere
, and then say: ‘That can only be in the United States, and is a step we should be anxious to avoid'.

(14)
Which
and
that

On the whole it makes for smoothness of writing not to use the relative
which
where
that
would do as well, and not to use either if a sentence makes sense and runs pleasantly without. But that is a very broad general statement, subject to many exceptions.

Grammarians sometimes speak of a ‘commenting'
which
, and a ‘defining'
that
:

The mouse, which was brown, died. (It happened to be brown. It died.)

The mouse that was brown died. (The brown mouse died, unlike the rest of the mice—not brown, and still alive.)

That
cannot be used with a commenting clause, the relative must be
which
.
*
With a defining clause either
which
or
that
is permissible, but
that
is to be preferred. When in a defining clause the relative is in the objective case, it can often be left out altogether. Thus we have three variants:

This case ought to go to the Home Office,
which
deals with police establishments. (Commenting relative clause.)

The Department
that
deals with police establishments is the Home Office. (Defining relative clause.)

This is the case you said we ought to send to the Home Office. (Defining relative clause in which the relative pronoun, if it were expressed, would be in the objective case: ‘This is the case
that
you said …'.)

That
is an awkward word because it may be one of three parts of speech—a conjunction, a relative pronoun and a demonstrative pronoun. The three are illustrated in the order given in the following sentence:

I think that the paper that he wants is that one.

It is a sound rule that
that
should be dispensed with whenever this can be done without loss of clarity or dignity. For instance, the sentence just given might be written with only one
that
instead of three:

I think the paper he wants is that one.

Some verbs seem to need a conjunctive
that
after them more than others do.
Say
and
think
can generally do without. The more formal words like
state
and
assert
cannot.

We have already noted that the conjunctive
that
can lead a writer into the error of careless duplication.
*
The following
that
defies both sense and grammar:

As stated by the Minister of Fuel and Power on the 8th April, a standard ration will be available for use from 1st June, 1948, in every private car and motor cycle currently licensed and that an amount equivalent to the standard ration will be deducted …

The writer forgot how the sentence began and concluded as though the opening had been ‘On the 8th April, the Minister of Fuel and Power stated that …'.

The Ministry of Food allow such demonstrations only if the materials used are provided by the staff and that no food is sold to the public.

In this sentence the use of
that
for
if
is even less excusable because the writer had less time to forget the beginning.

Their intention was probably to remove from the mind of the man in question that he was in any way bound to work, and that the Government would protect him from bad employers.

This example shows the need of care in a sentence in which
that
has to be repeated. If you do not remember what words introduced the first
that
, you may easily find yourself, as here, saying the opposite of what you mean. What this writer was trying to say was that the intention was to remove the first idea and replace it with the second, not, as accidentally stated, to remove both.

Note
. Gowers remarks above that ‘With a defining clause either
which
or
that
is permissible, but
that
is to be preferred'. He may have used a distancing passive here because he was less than
scrupulous about following this advice himself. Quotations throughout the book show other writers ignoring it too: Sir Harold Nicolson, when he comments that neither X nor Y nor Z ‘will suffer permanently or seriously from the spectacle which they have provided'; Logan Pearsall Smith, who says ‘a language which was all idiom and unreason would be impossible as an instrument of thought'; Churchill, who is quoted in
Chapter X
declaring rousingly: ‘no future generation of English-speaking folks … will doubt that … we were guiltless of the bloodshed, terror and misery which have engulfed so many lands'. It is as well to be aware that in some readers these uses of
which
will provoke an immediate corrective spasm: ‘from the spectacle
that
they have provided'; ‘a language
that
was all idiom and unreason'; ‘the bloodshed, terror and misery
that
have engulfed so many lands'. ~