Quick, which is right?
The organization’s funding ran out. They need more money.
The organization’s funding ran out. It needs more money.
Aww, pronouns. Aren’t they lovely? They save space and time, yet as it the case with all grammatical rules people will find a way to misuse them.
In the above example, the second option is most correct despite what common sense might otherwise dictate. Yes, an organization is made up of different people, which might suggest the use of “they,” but really, the correct pronoun is the singular “it.”
Why? The organization is acting as whole. It’s a singular object composed of many smaller objects, thus the “it.” Simple stuff, right?
Wrong.
My writers, and copyeditors, at my newspaper fail to catch this error all the time. I don’t know what their problem is, but they can’t seem to understand a team, organization, company, or group is a singular object.
I am ready to give up quite honestly. I figure if the writer wants a team to be a “they” then fine. The team can be a “they” because honestly what difference does it make?
It would be simpler if a group was represented with a group pronoun. However, this concept would only work though if there was only one group in question, otherwise everything stops making sense.
For example, this sentence, “The Association of Angry Aardvarks ate all the ants. They enjoyed the feast,” it isn’t clear who enjoyed the eating.
Did the ants enjoy being eaten? Or did the Association enjoy eating the ants? A quick tweak fixes the situation, “The Association of Angry Aardvarks ate all the ants. It enjoyed the feast.”
With the established rules, I know for a fact that the “it” refers to the organization and not the ants. See grammar saves the day again.
The question, then, is how to get people to understand this simple rule. As usual, I have got a few suggestions.
Offer the correct pronoun, and explain why it’s the correct pronoun, every time: The first time you explain to a person why a team is an it, and not a “they,” the offending person might even be grateful. The second time, not so much. The third, not at all. And by the fourth, he or she will stop for good.
Ask for clarification about the correct pronoun, every time: This solution follows a dialogue format along these lines every time he or she mentions a team, and then calls said team a “they,” you say something like, “Wait, where did the “they” come from? Was there an element of this conversation I missed? My god, please tell me, please.” Cry when you do this. It should fix the error.
Call the pronoun police: Their methods are cruel. Their practices illegal in the greater continental USA, but their success rate is near 95 percent. Do note they cost around 100,000 per corrected pronoun.
Move on with life without letting let things such as improper pronoun use affect you: Yeah, like that’s going to happen, am I right?
Again, I don’t have the answers, just hopes for a brighter grammatical future.
Yes everyone they.
ReplyDeleteI have come to sympathize with the folks who take a group, and talk about it as THEY. They have a point. Yes, the word GROUP is singular, but the people in it are plural.
Personally, I tend to rewrite to avoid the grammatical train wreck.
But for a lot of people, rewriting takes time, and worse, thought.
Ergo, they will not rewrite; they just plunge ahead.
Very good points about the pronoun reference. They…who?
Have you looked at Joseph Williams? I like the research that indicates that most people think that a pronoun refers back to the most recent noun of the same number. But a lot of people use "this" or "that" to refer, not to a recent noun, but to a line of thinking expressed in the previous paragraph. Confusing.