On Nov. 15, a high-level government official caused quite a stir when he disparaged \u201cwhite suburban moms\u201d for resisting efforts to elevate teaching and learning in U.S. schools. \u201cAll of a sudden,\u201d he said, \u201ctheir child isn\u2019t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn\u2019t quite as good as they thought they were.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some may question the statement\u2019s tone; what concerns us here is its grammatical absurdity. Note that \u201ctheir child,\u201d which is singular, somehow becomes plural six words later, with \u201cthey were\u201d referring to one child. Same with \u201ctheir school\u201d: in the span of seven words, one school has become \u201cthey.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are various ways to fix this mess, but here is one we don\u2019t recommend: \u201ctheir child isn\u2019t as brilliant as they thought he or she was.\u201d Using he<\/em> or she<\/em> is a valid solution, and there are times when a writer has to use the phrase, but he<\/em> or she<\/em> is a dismal option that should be avoided whenever possible.<\/p>\n We could change \u201cchild isn\u2019t\u201d to \u201cchildren aren\u2019t\u201d and make \u201cschool\u201d plural: \u201cAll of a sudden, their children aren\u2019t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their schools aren\u2019t quite as good as they thought they were.\u201d At least that makes grammatical sense. Still, the repetition of they<\/em> in \u201cthey thought they were\u201d is grating once, let alone twice.<\/p>\n Effective speakers and writers are guided by this line from Hamlet: \u201cBrevity is the soul of wit.\u201d Sure enough, if we look for extraneous words in the sentence and remove them, voil\u00e0<\/em>: \u201cAll of a sudden, their child isn\u2019t as brilliant as they thought, and their school isn\u2019t quite as good as they thought.\u201d That\u2019s about as good as it\u2019s going to get.<\/p>\n The statement was made by, of all people, the U.S. secretary of education. Lead by example, Mr. Secretary.<\/p>\n Pop Quiz<\/strong> Pop Quiz Answers<\/strong> On Nov. 15, a high-level government official caused quite a stir when he disparaged \u201cwhite suburban moms\u201d for resisting efforts to elevate teaching and learning in U.S. schools. \u201cAll of a sudden,\u201d he said, \u201ctheir child isn\u2019t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn\u2019t quite as good as they thought they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,8,26,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-effective-writing","category-pronouns","category-singular-vs-plural","category-subject-and-verb-agreement"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nCorrect any sentences that need fixing.
\n1. One of every two houses you see are vacant.
\n2. Ten pounds are heavier than you think.
\n3. Every student at our son\u2019s all-boys school gets a discount on their books.
\n4. I felt that twenty dollars wasn\u2019t worth the bother.
\n5. No one on the bus knew their way around town.<\/p>\n
\n1. One of every two houses you see is<\/em> vacant.
\n2. Ten pounds is<\/em> heavier than you think.
\n3. Every student at our son\u2019s all-boys school gets a discount on his<\/em> books.
\n4. I felt that twenty dollars wasn\u2019t worth the bother. CORRECT<\/strong>
\n5. No one on the bus knew his or her<\/em> way around town. (Without a rewrite, his or her<\/em> is virtually unavoidable.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"