Grammar that makes you cringe

[Bledlow]

It as a pronoun for humans sounds... dehumanising. If you're talking about a particular child, you can use he or she. If you don't know the child then you can find another way to phrase the sentence, avoiding animate it and singular they.

Many languages don't have male or female pronouns. Some distinguish between people & objects, but in many others everyone is 'it'.

I've read a diary entry from a few hundred years ago, written after the death of a small child. The author was obviously heartbroken at the death of his beloved daughter - & consistently referred to her as 'it'. It wasn't at all dehumanising in his mind.

[citoyen]

If there were more than one man, you'd hope for more than one nose.

Yesbutnobut... This is all sounding boringly familiar.... I'm sure we've done this discussion before so I won't labour the point.

[Cudzoziemiec]

It as a pronoun for humans sounds... dehumanising. If you're talking about a particular child, you can use he or she. If you don't know the child then you can find another way to phrase the sentence, avoiding animate it and singular they.

Many languages don't have male or female pronouns. Some distinguish between people & objects, but in many others everyone is 'it'.

I've read a diary entry from a few hundred years ago, written after the death of a small child. The author was obviously heartbroken at the death of his beloved daughter - & consistently referred to her as 'it'. It wasn't at all dehumanising in his mind.

But that doesn't necessarily mean it's the same in English now.

<Digression into other languages>"Child" is neuter in Polish, but forms a plural and is used with particular forms of numbers typical of people. English doesn't have those, which is occasionally a shame.</Digression>

[L CC]

If there were more than one man, you'd hope for more than one nose.

Yesbutnobut... This is all sounding boringly familiar.... I'm sure we've done this discussion before so I won't labour the point.

We've done ellipsis litter before but that doesn't mean we can't do it again...

(Yours is fine, it's just reminded me of all the others...)

[red marley]

But have we done ellipsis singular / plural yet? It one of those comparatively rare instances where the the 'correct' written form of the plural is more ambiguous than the incorrect...

Ellipse or ellipses?

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[citoyen]

We've done ellipsis litter before but that doesn't mean we can't do it again...

(Yours is fine, it's just reminded me of all the others...)

Thank you for highlighting it. It's an annoying habit that is far too easy to fall into.

[Nuncio]

Ellipse or ellipses?

Don't know.  Shall we make it an agendum?

[mattc]

But have we done ellipsis singular / plural yet? It one of those comparatively rare instances where the the 'correct' written form of the plural is more ambiguous than the incorrect...

Ellipse or ellipses?

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Very good!

Paragraphs of a hundred+ words with only ellipsises for punctuation are a bit naff. Citoyen's [ellipsiseses] made sense in their context.

With trailing ellipses, I just assume the poster hasn't finished writing yet, so the content can be safely ignored.

[red marley]

[...] naff [...] Citoyen's [...] writing [...] can be safely ignored.

I hope I haven't quoted you out of context, but that's a bit harsh isn't it?

[mattc]

yes, you have!

(and I'm not sure how serious you're being, so I'll leave it at that ...   . )

[citoyen]

Harsh but probably fair!

[T42]

on the other hand, I have noticed an increasing tendency for writers to get confused halfway through a sentence.  "People cannot get it through their head"

Nothing wrong with that, if you presume that the people have only one head each.

(Compare and contrast: "Men with big noses." / "Men with a big nose.")

Wrong: if people have one head each then people have heads.

"Men with a big nose" is wrong as well, unless they're brandishing some kind of papier maché effort in a pageant.

[drossall]

It can matter quite a lot. 100 soldiers with a machine gun would be a lot less worrying if your side had 10 soldiers with machine guns

[T42]

Naturally, but despite US protestations to the contrary, firearms are not a natural part of the human anatomy.

[Vince]

Naturally, but despite US protestations to the contrary, firearms are not a natural part of the human anatomy.

Clean up to isle 3 please - Coffee to be removed from keyboard

[drossall]

Naturally, but despite US protestations to the contrary, firearms are not a natural part of the human anatomy.

They get brandished though - I think it was you who set me on that train of thought by using the word

[mattc]

Naturally, but despite US protestations to the contrary, firearms are not a natural part of the human anatomy.

And following on this, isn't ambiguity important here?
US Cidzuns have 0,1 or several guns.

Most humans have 1 nose. So you can say "the mens' noses" or "men with big noses" and it is implied that there are as many noses as men i.e. no confusion.

But "women with big guns" leaves a lot to ... er ... the imagination.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Naturally, but despite US protestations to the contrary, firearms are not a natural part of the human anatomy.

And following on this, isn't ambiguity important here?
US Cidzens have 0,1 or several guns.

Most humans have 1 nose. So you can say "the mens' noses" or "men with big noses" and it is implied that there are as many noses as men i.e. no confusion.

But "women with big guns" leaves a lot to ... er ... the imagination.

Does that mean all the men are grocers? Or even grocer's?

[T42]

Naturally, but despite US protestations to the contrary, firearms are not a natural part of the human anatomy.

And following on this, isn't ambiguity important here?
US Cidzuns have 0,1 or several guns.

Most humans have 1 nose. So you can say "the mens' noses" or "men with big noses" and it is implied that there are as many noses as men i.e. no confusion.

But "women with big guns" leaves a lot to ... er ... the imagination.

It gets even murkier in US states with a concealed/unconcealed-carry law.

[citoyen]

it is implied that there are as many noses as men i.e. no confusion.

No, it would be a reasonable assumption most of the time but it is still an assumption and not logically implied.

Another example:
"Men with a big nose and a small nose" - would that describe a group of men with two noses each or two noses between them?

[T42]

"Men with a big nose and a small nose":  I would infer that the aforesaid men had two noses each, and that whoever formulated the sentence didn't really know how to say so clearly.

[Cudzoziemiec]

"Men with a big nose and a small nose" is a very strange sentence. Without any context it's so ambiguous as to be meaningless, other than as an example or question or in a pedantic grammar book.

"Men with big noses and small noses" clearly means men with any size nose, unless the context is so particular as to make it clear that we are dealing with multi-hootered individuals.

[drossall]

Apologies. I removed my posting because I made an error after the part that T42 quoted, and I wanted to rethink.

I would understand the meaning to be two between them.

The singular implies collective possession of one item, and the plural is most likely to mean one each; the plural could mean that the crowd shares more than one, but less than one each, but the context should make this clear.

If ambiguity is a real concern, you can introduce "each" to resolve it: Men, each with a big nose and a small nose. As Cudzoziemiec suggests, given that the possession of anything other than one nose per person is inherently improbable, the need to resolve ambiguity would always apply to noses.

If you wanted to express the fact that many men shared fewer, but more than one, noses, you would have to write this more explicitly. I doubt that you will find yourself doing that too frequently.

[T42]

OK, I killed mine too.

[citoyen]

I doubt that you will find yourself doing that too frequently.

True but that's missing the point somewhat.

"Men with a big nose and a small nose" is entirely clear and unambiguous if you follow the logic of it. You're all making this far more complicated than it needs to be.