Grammar Nazis come in here please.

[Chryst Krispies]

I have a question that I need ayuda with ASAP.

I'm finishing an athlete profile for a Sport Psychology class, and I have a grammar question.

What's the right way to write this:

Task goal orientation is usually more realistic and allows the athletes more control over themselves.

Task goal orientation is usually more realistic and allows the athlete more control over themself.

Task goal orientation is usually more realistic and allows the athletes more control over themself.


I think it's the first one, but WORD keeps telling me it's wrong.
WHAT THE FUCK MICROSOFT WORD.

Someone tell me I'm right OR correct me and I'll fucking slap the shit outta word and finish this goddamn paper.

 

[Joematthews]

Original post deleted due to high bullshit content

Joe

 

[Lasse Lammert]

Task goal orientation is usually more realistic and allows the athletes more control over themselves.

Task goal orientation is usually more realistic and allows the athlete more control over him/herself.

should both be right.

I read "Nazi", I had to chime in

 

[Line666]

2nd one, because "the athlete" (single) "themself" (single), instead of "the athlete" (single), "themselves" (plural)...


Although I have been spray painting some shizz so I'm felling pretty wierd

Joe

But the first one is plural/plural.

It really depends on the context of the passage as a whole I think. For what its worth I mostly end up ignoring all of Microsoft Words dodgy grammar highlights anyway, they're always just as wrong as my supposed "spelling mistakes".

 

[Chryst Krispies]

should both be right.

I read "Nazi", I had to chime in

There's a little Kraut in all of us

Thanks dudes; I knew MS word was garbage.

 

[JeffTD]

The first one, but it's a strangely worded sentence. I'd change it to something like...

"Task goal orientation is not only more realistic, but allows the athlete more control over himself.

Yes, himself is grammatically correct. When the gender is unknown, you assume masculine. None of this his/herself or themself bullshit! Not to mention 'themself' is not a word. It'd be 'them self,' but as two words that looks retarded.

 

[Metaltastic]

Only the first one is right; it's a common mistake in America to use "they/them" when not wanting to ascribe a gender to a singular unisex term (in this case "athlete"), so the only way the second would be right is to say "allows the athlete more control over him/herself" (like anyone wants to say all that though, hence the prevalence of "they/them")

Oh whoops, looks like Jeff and I disagree on the him/herself; I guess growing up in NYC has taught me to err on the side of political correctness!

 

[Lasse Lammert]

The first one, but it's a strangely worded sentence. I'd change it to something like...

"Task goal orientation is not only more realistic, but allows the athlete more control over himself.

Yes, himself is grammatically correct. When the gender is unknown, you assume masculine. None of this his/herself or themself bullshit! Not to mention 'themself' is not a word. It'd be 'them self,' but as two words that looks retarded.

I was keeping it open...might be he's writing this for some girl college.... well, I've seen too many dirty movies

 

[J the TyranT]

DSS3 is right... which is why shit usually appears as such:

"... but allows the athlete more control over his or herself."

Depends on how technical you feel like being. His wording is better, though. I'd use "also" instead of "but" as that transition though, but otherwise its solid.

"Task goal orientation is not only typically more realistic, it also allows the athlete more control over his or herself."

 

[Chryst Krispies]

The first one, but it's a strangely worded sentence. I'd change it to something like...

"Task goal orientation is not only more realistic, but allows the athlete more control over himself.

Yes, himself is grammatically correct. When the gender is unknown, you assume masculine. None of this his/herself or themself bullshit! Not to mention 'themself' is not a word. It'd be 'them self,' but as two words that looks retarded.

Thanks dude.

I agree it was a weird sentence, this paper is sort of full of them though because I've been writing it over the course of a few weeks so I'm fucking BURNED on it. Not to mention it's like 5 pages single spaced.

 

[JeffTD]

Oh whoops, looks like Jeff and I disagree on the him/herself; I guess growing up in NYC has taught me to err on the side of political correctness!

I get in arguments with people over this actually haha. I will ALWAYS side with grammatical correctness over political correctness.

It's not like politicians actually use grammar, anyways. How many of those douchebags misuse the word "myself"? The easier question: how many don't?

 

[iekobrid]

it's a common mistake in America to use "they/them" when not wanting to ascribe a gender to a singular unisex term

"They" and "their" have been used with indefinite singular antecedents* since the 14th century, and are considered both generic (no number value implied) and epicene** (no gender implied).

I use the singular "their" in a professional context daily, as once did Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Rudyard Kipling, and H.G. Wells, so why shouldn't "they" be just as acceptable?


* [a word I only recently learned while debating this very subject with a friend]

** [yes, that's a new word for me, too ]


{edit: corrected the spellings of "epicene" and "Dickens"}

 

[Metaltastic]

"They" and "their" have been used with indefinite singular antecedents* since the 14th century, and are considered both generic (no number value implied) and epicine** (no gender implied).

I use the singular "their" in a professional context daily, as once did Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, Charles Dickesn, Oscar Wilde, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Rudyard Kipling, and H.G. Wells, so why shouldn't "they" be just as acceptable?


* [a word I only recently learned while debating this very subject with a friend]

** [yes, that's a new word for me, too ]

....

OH YEAH? Well, umm...YOU'RE FAT!!

Seriously though, I definitely remember learning that using "they/them" referring to a singular antecedent (that word I did know before, but not epicine) was technically incorrect, but of course it's not like the meaning is ever in doubt, which in the end is what really matters I guess!

 

[aberration]

I can't believe I missed chiming in on this one.

 

[iekobrid]

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-the2.htm


' Those who deprecate this form argue that a pronoun must agree in number with the noun to which it refers. The rule has been drummed into generations of schoolchildren by teachers who are quite sure that it exists.

Unfortunately, it's not the way that reputable writers have used they, their and them down the centuries. It is possible to find examples of such pronouns used with singular nouns at least as far back as Chaucer. The problem is that English doesn't have a gender-neutral pronoun to cope with those cases in which we know little about the person being referred to. Many writers have happily got around this by using they and its relatives as indefinite pronouns, especially after words such as anyone, everyone, someone and no one.

Our modern confusion stems from eighteenth-century grammarians who analysed English according to the structures of Latin and imposed stringent and irrelevant rules (such as the one about not splitting infinitives) that have bedevilled everybody since. '



' Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage remarks that "They, their, them have been used continuously in singular reference for about six centuries, and have been disparaged in such use for about two centuries. '

 

[26]

nazi grammar joke (german only, sorry)

 

[Joematthews]

Owen, I just read it again and realised that i was talking complete bullshit.... mmmm paint . 1 and 2 are correct depending on the context.

Joe