Geez. At least “he or she” was used correctly.PappaGun wrote:Whenever I see "he or she" by a reporter he or she has already lost me.
That's so PC and I can surmise that the bent is going against me from the start.
The author is a research assistant at UT, meaning at least post-grad. Good grief. Did she do remotely well on the verbal portion of her SAT? Or take any English classes as an undergrad?
“Tony and Kory argued that those, like myself, who oppose...” Correct use is the simple objective pronoun, “me.” “Myself” should only be used reflexively (e.g., “I hurt myself”; “I can manage by myself”) or for a poetic emphasis.
“...Who fears the known presence of a lethal weapon around his or herself or a proponent...” Another penalty flag. In the sentence, “his or herself” is a pronoun phrase acting as a prepositional object. When a pronoun is an object—direct, indirect, or prepositional—it should be in the objective case. “His” is subjective case; “herself” is objective case. “Him” would have been correct. Ain’t all that diificult.
Not infallible, but a simple test is to remove all the unessential words and listen to the way the clause would sound. In this case it would be, “...who fears a weapon around his?” Obviously doesn’t work.
Too, Kathryn Sieverman should learn the handy application of the amazing comma. Not a great example of a post-graduate (or higher) product of one of our state universities.
Sorry for the thread hijack. I’m not sensitive about casual writing, but I expect an article submitted to a third-party for publication to be at least modestly conformant to English grammar...certainly without run-on sentences, and with fewer than one glaring error per 100 words.
But what do I know? I’m just one of those “CHL individuals,” whose sorry lot has “been convicted of thousands of crimes, including murder.” I’m not an academic; not associated with life on any university. I’m just an ignorant peasant, just one among the unwashed masses who believes in the Constitution of the United States and who, yes, will cling to my Bible and my guns.
[ /end rant ]
P.S. Kory, I’m certain you acquitted yourself well. Thank you.