So are you saying, Alison, that the SAT and other standardized tests
would find such usage preferable? Most of the SAT questions provide choices,
and if one of the choices were to recast the sentence to avoid pairing the
singular noun with the plural “their,” would that not be the “correct”
choice?
By the way, the answer to today’s SAT “question of the day”
is a good example of why we don’t need that tail to wag this dog. See it
at http://apps.collegeboard.com/qotd/question.do.
I chose option “A” because I thought the verb needed to be in the
present tense. I imagine that a lot of students who have been taught to refer
to published writing in the present tense would also have made that selection.
Nancy
From: Assembly
for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Alison Cochrane
Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2007
11:52 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: more teaching
questions on grammar
Natalie,
The third person plural subject/possessive
pronoun has become widely accepted recently for standardization purposes
instead of continually writing he/she.
Alison
QCC
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