or Lies My English Teacher Told Me<\/i><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Some people are of the opinion that there should be strict rules to
\nwriting; that there is a “right” way to write. Some people think it is
\npossible to get caught in a politically-correct minefield through their
\nchoice of pronouns alone. I’m not of that opinion,
\nHREF=”http:\/\/www.kuro5hin.org\/story\/2003\/6\/16\/143616\/593”>though others
\nevidently are. Personally, I believe the choice of pronouns should be
\nmade with the same care and caution as any other word. There’s no more a
\n“correct pronoun” than there is a “correct vocabulary”.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I’m just as careful when faced with a choice of he, she, they, it, I, we,
\nyou as I would be when faced with chosing a word meaning “bad”:
\nnauseating, ill, rotten, mischievous, stale, tainted, unruly, immoral,
\ninferior…?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
One could lecture one’s students to sleep on the topic of pronouns and
\nprepositions and other pompus poppycock. A student might head the lessons;
\nhis prose will be as colorful as the rules. Another might rebel so that
\nhers are so incomprehensibly obscured by post-modern linguistic variation
\nthat s\/he loses all track of what he\/she was… uh… what? Another will
\nmimic our professor and affect a tone we all recognize. You illiterate
\ntechnofreaks are so deep in your C++ porn accumulators you probably
\nhaven’t even noticed the difference because you’re too busy playing
\nlanguage police. When confronted with the kind of human defect that likes
\nto play language cop there are very few choices: you can ignore it,
\ndestroy it or tell it to go fuck itself.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The point I’m trying to make is that these words affect how I sound. No
\ndoubt there is a fetal reject that doesn’t like that I put periods outside
\nparentheses (e.g. “correct vocabulary”.), refuse to sandwich apostrophes
\nbetween S’ (e.g. others’ writing) and end sentences with prepositions. It
\nknows what to do to itself because “this is the kind of nonsense up with
\nwhich I will not put”. (Winston Churchill)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\nHREF=”http:\/\/www.kuro5hin.org\/comments\/2003\/6\/16\/143616\/593\/103#103”>Original
\nPost at Kuro5hin.org<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
or Lies My English Teacher Told Me Some people are of the opinion that there should be strict rules to writing; that there is a “right” way to write. Some people think it is possible to get caught in a politically-correct minefield through their choice of pronouns alone. I’m not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[27],"class_list":["post-150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-long-wander","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}