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To: TomServo
"Send the note back corrected, Luis. Could be good for a laugh or two."

My daughter brought home a paper marked down because she had referred to the plural of monkey as "monkeys". I sent the paper back to the student teacher asking how she would have her spell it. The paper was returned to my daughter with the grade corrected.

Doesn't anyone refer to a dictionary anymore?

My biggest gripe are notes that come home from teachers with a sentence similar to this:

EACH student should bring THEIR own bagged lunch. Each is singular, their is plural, yet they refer to the same...I'm sure there's a grammatical description for this, but I don't recall it. Drives me nuts when I see or hear this error, often in radio and TV commercials!

356 posted on 05/06/2003 7:40:24 AM PDT by OldBlondBabe
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To: OldBlondBabe
"EACH student should bring THEIR own bagged lunch. Each is singular, their is plural, yet they refer to the same...I'm sure there's a grammatical description for this, but I don't recall it. Drives me nuts when I see or hear this error, often in radio and TV commercials! "

Unfortunately we need to get used to this type of error. You see, the plural is neither masculine nor feminine as is the singular. To write the phrase correctly, you would have to commit the sin of Political Incorrectness. I suppose you could say "his or her own" but even then, there might be a small part of the population still offended. :)

386 posted on 05/22/2003 12:38:35 AM PDT by NonValueAdded ("Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." GWB 9/20/01)
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