Grammar Moses: Times they are a changin'

There has been much controversy over Time magazine's choice of 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg for person of the year.

I suspect that if Time magazine had also selected a word of the year - the same one Merriam-Webster did - and slapped it on the cover in front of a beautiful sunrise it would have caused a similar political firestorm.

The dictionary people selected "they," which saw a threefold increase in lookups at merriam-webster.com in 2019 as compared to 2018.

Why?

"I have to say it's surprising to me," said Peter Sokolowski, a lexicographer and Merriam-Webster's editor at large, in an interview with The Associated Press. "It's a word we all know and love. So many people were talking about this word."

Sokolowski's team noted a couple of large spikes in searches for "they":

• In January, when model Oslo Grace made it big on top fashion runways. Oslo identifies as transgender nonbinary, modeling in both men's and women's shows.

• In April, Democratic congresswoman Pramila Jayapal spoke of her gender-nonconforming child during a House committee hearing as she advocated for LGBTQ rights.

A new definition of "they" was added to the dictionary relating not to a plural but as a single person whose gender identity is neither "he" nor "she."

This is supported by the American Psychological Association and The Associated Press.

If you don't want to assume how a person sees, um, "theyself?" the thought goes, "they" takes care of any possibility.

Of course, it's always good to ask rather than assume.

I've written before about this difficult issue. I want to be sensitive to people's feelings and struggles. But I'd much rather use a person's name rather than what for centuries has been a plural pronoun to describe a person for whom traditional personal pronouns do not fit. The Associated Press suggests we use a person's last name instead of a pronoun whenever possible. If a "they" is employed, then an explanation is in order, AP says.

In a great many cases, one can write (or speak) around having to use "they."

My only objection to "they" is that it can cause confusion over how many people you're talking about.

I suspect I'll soften as the years pass and its usage spreads, but for now I'll try to avoid "they," as well as "them" and "their" for this purpose.

With that subject exhausted, are you wondering what the runners-up were for word of the year?

Not surprisingly, they were "quid pro quo" (actually three words) and "impeach."

Pick your brain

Reader Bob Kopp sent me an email with the subject line "Picky, picky, picky."

My first instinct was to get defensive. But it wasn't one of those notes in which someone chides me for being a stick in the mud.

"I caught a phrase in today's paper I felt uncomfortable with," he wrote. "AP's article about a retired (hockey) goalie began with 'Doctors told Tim Thomas that two-thirds of his brain were getting less than 5% blood flow ...' I thought two-thirds of a brain was a single subject rather than plural. Two-thirds of his brain cells would be a plural subject."

If his brain were made up of three distinct lobes, each constituting an even third of the brain, and two of those lobes were compromised, the sentence could be close to correct. The two "thirds" could be looked upon as individual units.

The hyphen in "two-thirds," however, eliminates that scenario, indicating not individual units but a portion of the whole.

Seeing as how the brain has four lobes of varying sizes, the sentence clearly is incorrect.

The word in the sentence should have been "was," not "were."

Anyone with half a brain can see that.

Write carefully!

• Jim Baumann is vice president/managing editor of the Daily Herald. Write him at jbaumann@dailyherald.com. Put Grammar Moses in the subject line. You also can friend or follow Jim at facebook.com/baumannjim.