Wednesday, April 20, 2011

A Grammar Peeve

I just saw a commercial for the 2012 Honda Civic. It shows all sorts of bizarre drivers--monsters, superheroes, what seems to be a mountain man of some kind. Then the slogan on the screen reads "To Each Their Own."

Perhaps I'm a grammar snob; but "each" is singular and "their" is plural. This is a basic lack of agreement. Yes, it's problematic that the English language has no singular pronoun that includes both genders. But is it cool for people to simply force in the ungrammatical mix of singular and plural? Isn't this contributing to the dumbing down of America?

Okay, you may now accuse me of being inflexible. The stuffed shirt of grammar.

But I shall cling to this usage: "To each his (or her) own," because it makes sense and fits the beautiful structure of our beautiful language.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree with you. --BrendaW.

Julia Buckley said...

Thanks, Brenda!

Julia Buckley said...

Haha. Marybeth, you are my new best friend. (Along with Brenda). :)

It's good to know that viewers still have standards.

On a different note, is your last name Hungarian?