Let Everybody Introduce Their Own Self

My conclusion that “everybody . . . their” has become standard English is not universally embraced.

Almost everyone seems to object to this usage, though it is prevalent today among literate people and can be found in cultivated written English as far back as the 16th Century.

Like several others, Irving R. Tannenbaum, professor of chemistry at West Los Angeles College, wonders why we can’t simply recast our sentences, as in “All should put their hats on,” instead of “Everybody should put their hats on.”

That certainly is the easy and grammatical way out, but speech habits die hard; I doubt that everyone will think to say “all” instead of everyone or everybody . We don’t think that far ahead when we talk; we use old patterns.

David P. Lewis of Sherman Oaks suggests various solutions. “Any grammarian worthy of the title would say, ‘Will you all put on your hats?’ or ‘Let’s all put on our hats’ or ‘Put on your hats, please.’ ”

Lewis protests that my examples from 16th and 19th-Century English writers are irrelevant today “except as footnotes to the evolution of English.”

He says: “You may argue that when someone says that (‘Will everyone put on their hats’) we know what they (!) mean, but one might also posit that when I say ‘I ain’t got no money,’ everybody knows what I mean. How far do we go with this?”

By inserting that exclamation point after his “someone . . . they,” Mr. Lewis indicates that he is aware of his solecism, and is only kidding. But his only acceptable alternative would have been the awkward he or she .

Robert M. Tappan of Cambria says he is confused by the headline over my column: “Everybody Are Not Happy With This.” He asks: “Did it mean ‘Nobody are happy with this’? or ‘Not everybody are happy with this’? or don’t it make any difference?”

I think the headline was quite clear, but of course everybody is entitled to their own interpretation.

Ward B. Lewis of Rancho Mirage protests my suggestion that everybody might be treated as a collective, like the British team , corporation and government , and given a plural verb and pronoun. He insists that crowd, company and corporation are not plural nouns, but singular. “To me,” he says, “the most objectionable is the opening sentence on ‘Masterpiece Theatre’ on public television where Mobil Corporation invites you to join them . This is repeated weekly year after year.”

On the contrary, I always think of a crowd, a company or a corporation as being composed of many persons, and think the pronouns we , they or them quite suitable. While we do not say that “the Bush Administration are,” we usually refer to it in the next sentence as they , not it .

Joan Putt notes that the feminist movement has caused some peculiar manifestations of distorted English, though, as I said, it is not responsible for “everybody . . . their.” She writes: “Some years back we stopped for lunch at a Howard Johnson’s in Santa Maria. On the table was a folded, triangular questionnaire, similar to the ones on your hotel dresser. One of the questions was: ‘Did your waitperson introduce themself by name?’ ”

That’s truly lovely.

The only perhaps more enchanting example of a stillborn pronoun I have seen lately was one that book editor Jack Miles found, incredibly, in the Talk of the Town section of the New Yorker, a magazine long admired for its impeccable grammar. The Talk of the Town has always affected the editorial we even when obviously describing the adventures of one reporter. This sometimes difficult device resulted in this astonishing concoction: “We ourself . . . “

Is nothing sacred anymore?

Everett J. Daniels challenges my citing of Ronald Reagan’s use of “everybody . . . their” as evidence that it has become standard. “When I was a kid I used to hear about using the King’s English; nobody ever mentioned the President’s English.”

John McKiernan of Culver City says we must learn to use grammatical ways of avoiding “everybody . . . their,” such as “All of your questions will be answered.” He points out: “It is always possible to work around this supposed ‘flaw’ in the language without awkward forms or more awkward neologisms. You just have to care enough to try. But as usual everybody will do as they damn well please. They always do.”

Ain’t that the truth?