Comments on: Continuous or Continual?

By: John C

John C — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:48:56 +0000

A perennial flower is, in fact “one which, if it had lived, would have flowered year after year”

By: Nathan

Nathan — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 06:31:27 +0000

In examples, using “he/she,” “he or she,” or “s/he” when the sex of the antecedent would be known to the speaker is irresponsible. The same applies to throwing out one facet of grammar for subject-verb agreement, e.g., using “it” to refer to a person. This hypercorrection creates unnecessary grammatical inconsistency.

In my opinion, an example should be two things: grammatical and able to exist outside the context of a grammar rulebook.

“The child screamed continuously as long as its mother was on the telephone,”

to preserve subject-verb agreement, subject-pronoun agreement, and the (misguided) sexual ambiguity, could be written:

“The children screamed continuously as long as their mother was on the phone.”

Obviously using either “he” or “she”, but not “he or she,” would be perfectly fine as well. If I am wrong and there is a rule stating an example must have a singular subject of ambiguous sex, then I’m sorry; that is an incredibly stupid rule.

Correct use of punctuation and grammar in quotes and attributions is exemplified below.

“Hey Mr./Mrs. Baker,” the student said. He or she saw his or her teacher was angry, so explained, “Sorry, I’m late. I had to bring my sibling to his or her school, and he or she did not want to wake up this morning.”

“You don’t need to worry about it,” Mr./Mrs. Baker told him or her, and jokingly added, “unless he or she was late, too.”

By: Gaylon

Gaylon — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:35:34 +0000

Thank’s for that! I studied those words but came to the same conclusion you mentioned in the beginning. Even so, I felt there must be a difference! Now I know. I will watch when using those words!

By: Stewie

Stewie — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 12:34:05 +0000

Such PC-ness! Note that a child is an ‘it’, it’s actually ‘neuter’ in German for example. I take exception to people who consider children as persons.

I suggest that anyone who can’t live with he or she use ‘s/he’, it’s shorter and neater than writing ‘he or she’ and ‘he/she’. And it puts women first ))

By: Nafees Ahmad

Nafees Ahmad — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 05:04:19 +0000

So perpetual connots permanancy instead of continuity.

Thanks betsyG !!