Lately I have been seeing a lot of sentences that annoy me. they look like this: "John is a singer that is quite loud." I'm certain that this should be "John is a singer who is quite loud." The problem is that I'm seeing this substitution of 'that' for pronouns in these sentences so often that I'm wondering if I'm wrong?
grammar problem
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Comments
Relative pronouns
Normally in a relative clause, when referring to a person, one should use who. In the case of objects, animals, or a class or group of people, use that. The question that begs an answer in your example is what antecedent the pronoun is in agreement with. It could refer to 'John', the person, or 'singer', a class of people. In summary, both 'who' and 'that' are grammatically correct. The better solution is to just say, "John sings quite loudly." Just my 2 cents.
Sammy
Sammy
You're not wrong.
"Who" is the correct word in that sentence. "That" is routinely used, and it's not a new thing. It's rather old, in fact.
Somewhere, a long time ago, I saw a combination of "their", "there", and "they're" into one word, as a way of thumbing one's nose at grammar Nazis. I never could find it.
-- Daphne Xu
I used to
Get upset a lot about tense, misuse of words, punctuation and other lack of skills. Then I relaxed and just appreciated the attempt and enjoyed the content. I believe one of our most prolific writers has English as a second language. Cut them a break and correct as you read. I have done a lot of free editing but for some authors I won't even try. I will read it though for the entertainment.
I guess Sammy C's explanation is correct
but every time I come across it I'm jarred right out of the flow of the story. The same thing happens when I come across a miss-used homonym. Daphne, last year someone gave me a tee-shirt saying; There their they're.
One Word
Actually, the three words were mashed together into one in the picture I recall.
Rose with the nose chose her clothes and hose, and proceeded to lose them. I'm trying to rein in my visceral reaction to seeing "lose" written as "loose". On the other hand, seeing tongue written to rhyme with lounge is truly disturbing.
Also, both I and someone I was debating got caught referring to "ad homonym" attacks.
-- Daphne Xu
I find it disturbing
That books I buy or rent from Kindle unlimited, often claim to be edited but contain dozens of typos or homophones which are wrong, I am reading one at present where the spelling of a character's name is spelt differently in different chapters. Words are also missed out, it is infuriating. The current author I am reading has an omnibus of several books, where the spelling and grammar are quite good, but deteriorate and in a separate book in the series are so abundant it is almost risible.
Angharad
Misuse of words
Yes, we could say that a considerable chunk of authors here are not writing in their first language. Because many who grew up learning the Queen's English about two and half years ago suddenly had to learn a new language known as the King's English. [wink wink end sarcasm]
But all sarcasm aside, I get similar jarring experiences when reading stories. It happens more often with some authors and less with others. From my own professional experience writing in three different languages, I know that proof-reading and proper editing are absolutely vital to get your text as correct as possible. There are several strategies I have used:
Of the three languages I routinely use (German, Spanish and English), English is the worst offender for ambiguity in spelling or pronunciation. There are words pronounced basically the same, but spelled different to mean very different things. Just as there are words spelled the same, but pronounced differently to mean different things.
I can not shake the suspicion that a lot of those jarring errors are due to the increased use of speech-to-text AI (which stands for Absolute Idiot) coupled with differences in local dialect pronunciation. Using speech-to-text technology can be very helpful to quickly get thoughts “on paper” as a quick and dirty draft. The operating term is quick and dirty. That means, you have to invest time and effort to edit and proof-read the document, in order to take it from a dirty draft to a finished document. A process that will take several iterations.
A very frequent case in point is the statement: “The capitol of the USA is Washington DC and the capitol of Canada is Ottawa.” This is so wrong on so many levels that it jars me out of the flow. The capitol of the USA is located in the capital of Washington DC. And Canada does not have a capitol, but the capital of Canada is indeed the city of Ottawa.
The director of a school is never the principle, but always the principal. Just as you cannot take the waist out to the garbage can or reduce your waste with a corset to about 60cm. Nor is it possible demand that women should except trans-women into the female toilet. Or how about airports that have strict curfews for all flights accept medevac flights.
There are many similar word pairs that either change the meaning of the sentence or make the sentence completely senseless. Using a spell checker is a very useful first step in the proof-reading journey. But using autocorrect is an idiot tool best disabled. A grammar checker can be used to high-light some obviously problematic passages, but should only be used with the Mark 1 neuron based computer located between the Mark 1 ears fully engaged.
Brain Glitches
All too often, I type in precisely what I don't want to type in, such as when I think, "Not it's". I usually catch myself and correct it.
How many people would ever write "know" as the opposite of "yes"?
I wonder how many would-be readers were turned off by my title, "Murder Most Fowl". It wasn't a typo or brain glitch. Likewise, one story that I'll (probably) never finish has a box labelled "waist disposal".
-- Daphne Xu
To space or not to space, that is the question
This is from a recent story. It just stopped me cold from reading on.
So the character was singled out and taken away from the team.
Or did the author maybe mean to say:
In that the character was included and incorporated into the team, as if resistance is futile.
In this case the absence or presence of a single space completely alters the meaning of the sentence in diametrically opposed directions.
Let's eat Grandma!
Or was that, "Let's eat, Grandma!"
Break for meaning. The life you save may be your grandmother's. :)
— Emma
This reminded me of something I read just a few days ago…….
Donald Trump seems enamored of William McKinley and his tariffs, and keeps referring to McKinley as his “favorite president”. McKinley instituted a series of steep tariffs in order to protect the fledgling US tin plate industry; tin plate was used in multiple industries, but two big examples were canned foods and oil barrels. McKinley’s protective tariffs raised the average duty on imports to almost 50% on many goods in the US.
But my point here is that the first version of the tin plate tariff in the 1860’s was written wrong, and because of the language it was completely ineffective until corrected. It should have been written “on tin plate, and iron galvanized or coated with any metal”, but the Treasury Secretary at that time didn’t agree with the grammar and had it changed to read “on tin plate and iron, galvanized or coated with any metal”. The change made the tariff useless.
You see, you would never galvanize tin plate - it is already galvanized; it is already coated as part of the process of producing it. Hence, the tariff was worthless.
McKinley created the McKinley Tariff in 1890 which corrected this, and resulted in a duty of more than 70% on tin plate imports.
So you see, moving the one comma made a huge difference.
As an aside, economists all agree that the McKinley Tariff was still pointless. The US tinplate industry did in fact become profitable and the US began exporting tin plate products about 20 years after institution of the tariffs, but studies show that this would have happened even without the tariffs; all the tariff did was perhaps result in the industry becoming profitable a few years earlier than otherwise, at an increased cost in goods to the US consumer.
It should also be pointed out that after McKinley became president in 1897, his views on the tariffs reversed. Another interesting fact is that McKinley was in fact assassinated in 1901. Will history repeat itself?
D. Eden
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
Punctuation matters
That reminds me of a picture I saved from a pilot blog nearly 10 years ago. This pilot was on a layover in Paris having a picnic with his crew. One of the flight attendants was also moonlighting as a college professor, or maybe the college professor was moonlighting as a flight attendant. ;-)
Anyway, this flight attendant demonstrated how punctuation can completely alter the meaning of identical strings of words. She did so on a paper napkin, which this pilot photographed and included in his blog.
These are the words she wrote:
In some languages the problem may be even bigger
In Sweden I once saw a sign referring to "our lousy employees" when they presumably had intended to refer to "our cashiers". Only a space differed.