05.28.08
The three, amused, said “he he.”
Noted and cringed at:
From a 4/18/2008 article titled “NL’s slumping sophomores need patience,” from the Sporting News:
Ryan Braun, Troy Tulowitzki and Hunter Pence finished 1-2-3 in the National League rookie-of-the-year voting last year. And by April 15 of this season, each had been benched, giving him time to free his mind and find his lost games.
This exemplifies how we can stumble when trying to adhere slavishly to numeric agreement in grammar. The persnickitors* would have taken Ryan Braun’s weak bat to the SportingNews editors had they allowed “each had been benched, giving them time to free their minds . . .” But I suggest that they would have been justified in allowing it, and I might go as far as to encourage them to allow it.
Yes, each is singular. Their is plural. That’s a technical disconnect. Technical. An often more important connection is that of meaning. By writing each, author Gerry Fraley stated the individual but implied the group, and the group (a singular noun, as well) were (a plural verb) individually engaging in a common activity of freeing their minds. (A diplogrammatic* way to have phrased it would have been to write “all had been benched, giving them time . . .”)
The communication problem here is that the reader is jarred by a shift from discussing three players to stating one him. Which him? Ryan? Troy? Hunter? (And suppose the same sentence structure had been applied to three players in a mixed softball league, Fred, Harry and Sally? Who him then?) The impact of the paragraph was diffused by unclear reference demanded dictatorially by numeric agreement.
By the by, “the group were” is very much standard English in England, a place that has spoken the language for a decade or two.
* Neologism alert: Persnickitor–one who persnickets, one who fusses too hard about grammar from atop the mount; Diplogrammatic—a diplomatic way of sidestepping a grammar problem. End Neologism Alert.
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John said,
May 29, 2008 at 11:40 am
The inclusion of a girl in the mix would have complicated the sentence formation (not to mention the showers) because of the gender issue, but it’s irrelevant to the argument about the singular/plural agreement of the first sentence and the second.
I disagree that “the reader is jarred by a shift from discussing three players to stating one him.” The three are named individually in the first sentence. So the “each”-”him” construction in the second seemed natural to me. Moreover, using the singular gives the mental image of each one sitting on the bench, isolated from his teammates, lost in his own thoughts about what went wrong for him (he doesn’t care about the other two). Whether that was the author’s intent is unknown, but I think it came out right.
John said,
May 29, 2008 at 11:41 am
By the way, Bill, nice “blog”. I am a persnickitor too, but not in your league.
Bill Brohaugh said,
May 29, 2008 at 12:42 pm
John, even with your good points in mind, I still find the shift jarring when rereading it. Had there been more transition from group to isolated individual, the shift might not have seemed so abrupt to me.
However, I do bow to your analysis of the nuance of the communicated isolation. Point well taken.