Problematic Pronouns

Okay, so we had a little trouble with that "he/she - they" thing.

"If a student is late to class, he/she/they had better have a pass."

"Well now, student is singular, so it should be he."
"What if the student is a girl?"
"Doesn't matter. It's still he."
"That's sexist."
"That's right. But that's the rule. You could say she. But then what if the student is a boy? To be on the safe side, why don't you try he/she?"
"What, and sound like a doofus?"
"Yes, but a grammatically correct doofus."
"But I've heard you say many times in class 'If a student is going to be late to class, they'd better have a pass.'"
"Oh, sure. I don't want to offend anybody. And you all know what I mean."
"But now you're telling me that's grammatically incorrect."
"What I'm saying is, in real life we use he/she/they all the time. And in twenty to fifty years it will probably be accepted usage. But in the meantime, if a person were taking the SAT, he/she should use he or she or, preferably, he/she."
"(Doofus.")

Here's a good page from a very reputable source to tell you a little more about this.

And while we're at it, here's one that we did better on, but can still be troublesome -- especially considering that in idiomatic English, we often misspeak.

"Me and Bob went to the store."
"Bob and me went to the store."
Mom took Bob and I to the store."

Which is correct? None is. (Or is that"none are"? Damn!)*

"Bob and I went to the store", but "Mom took Bob and me to the store."

Here's the skinny on that one.




* Either, depending on context, is acceptable. The etymology of the word, along with the usage of more than five centuries, supports the senses of “not one” (singular) and “not any” (plural). On this descriptivists and informed prescriptivists agree, and bad teaching and bad advice are the only reasons that the superstition that “none” can be used only with a singular verb has survived.