[npc]

I wanted to quote from the previous message, but cutting and pasting from the (tiny) Post window is a real PITA using firefox on MacOS. I'm not a big fan of the forum software being used here, but that's a discussion for another day.

I said that most copy editors would flag sentences beginning with "But". You disagreed. Our experiences working with copy editors differ. Note that I don't say that one should never do this. For every style usage that is considered improper in the language someone can find an occurance where the "wrong" way is the best way. Decent books on writing are replete with examples of this. That doesn't mean that we should throw out all the rules of language style. I would claim that Gordon's usage in this instance isn't necessary, and therefore isn't appropriate. I believe copy editors I've worked with would agree with me.

As for the singular "they", Garner may be right that this will become common usage someday, I don't know. It certainly does solve the gender usage problem. When I've written conference papers and my book and had them copy edited, instances where I've done this were corrected, I believe rightly so. At some point this might be considered to be correct usage, and this point of view does seem to be gaining some sympathy, but I believe it is far from accepted practice at the present time.

Moreover, I hope it doesn't become commonly used. It's already hard enough in English to determine context from our overloaded pronouns. There has to be a better way to handle gender issues in print than making the word "they" even more vague than it already is.

Here's the deal. I said I thought many places in Gordon's book were poorly worded. I was asked to provide an example. I opened the book and quoted the first location I found that met my criteria. There are many other places where the wording is awkward at best, and Mason has provided another good example. I really don't plan to go through the book again looking for more or better examples because it takes me a lot of time to read that carefully, and I don't think it's that important.

Gordon's book communicates its good ideas adequately enough to make it well worth reading, but as I said in my review, in many places the writing made me cringe. I stand by that statement. I would expect that a copy editor would have worn out a red pencil going over this manuscript. I'm surprised a major publishing house released it in this form. Maybe that's just me.