One reason the young man didn’t immediately see his “me and Jimmy” construction as such a big deal was that it’s currently slang for his age group and younger.  This was one small, but significant, leap into adulthood that the young man hadn’t yet made.  I explained to him that, if he was going to break his habit, he’d have to give it up completely, not just selectively; he couldn’t talk one way at work and then start using “me and Jimmy” on the weekends with his friends.  I analogized: when I quit smoking, I had to do it across the board, absolutely and definitively.  I couldn’t quit at home and at work and then sneak even one smoke at a bar.  Especially tenacious habits like ours, I said, are very difficult to break. [Read more…]

I got a call recently from the owner of a consulting agency where a former student of mine had applied for a job for which I’d recommended him. My student didn’t get the job, but another student from my college, Davidson, did. The owner of the agency—the young man’s boss—was being driven to distraction by a habit of his new hire: despite the boss’s every effort to block the habit, the young man persisted in using constructions like “me and Jimmy will take care of that matter later today.” [Read more…]

Debate has arisen over whether the plural their is an acceptable pronoun for referring back to a singular subject, as in this example:

     Each hairdresser should bring their own supplies.

Here’s my preferred option:

    Each hairdresser should bring his or her own supplies.

This one is even better:

     All hairdressers should bring their own supplies. [Read more…]

In a recent edition of 60 Minutes, about America’s crumbling bridges, Steve Croft summarized what he thought he heard former U. S. Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood to be saying about the structures in question. “They’re dangerous,” prompted Croft, to see if Lahood would agree with him. “I don’t wanna say they’re unsafe,” responded Lahood. “But they’re dangerous. . . . I would agree with that.”

What did we miss? How can these bridges be “dangerous,” but not “unsafe”? When did those two words come to mean something even slightly different? Was Steve Croft listening? (I won’t ask, though as a Davidson College faculty member I’d like to, why Lahood was interviewed instead of Davidson alumnus and current Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx.) [Read more…]