One Should Express “Theirself” Grammatically

Some few years ago I cannot, at this late date, put an exact number to, I was in a conversation at an Oklahoma sports forum with several other people – several other men – who, with me, share a certain level of passion for small school, high school football. Longer story shortened for brevity’s sake and to omit the gory details no self-respecting reader would be interested in knowing in any case, the conversation in question suddenly degenerated into a sniping contest between three or four of the other participants. Since I understood what the main source of the contention between them was and had long since built a rapport with them all, I decided to intercede, in hopes of turning the conversation back to a more civil, mutually respectful and productive dialogue among otherwise friendly acquaintances.

The main source of the early and mutually respectful disagreement-turned-nasty was not, as might be imagined minus further elucidation, what anyone actually said or intended to say to anyone else initially; rather, it was how a thing or things said was/were (mis)perceived or interpreted by one or more of the other participants. But there was also an underlying problem mostly responsible for that situation as well – namely that at least two of the participants in question were very prone to expressing themselves in written conversation without the slightest regard for capitalization, punctuation or proper grammar; such that their writing necessarily required a fair amount of deciphering by readers to understand correctly and as the authors in question intended it be understood.

As part of my intercessory counsel, I asked the offenders just mentioned to take a few moments away from their computer screens and keyboards and imagine they were in a face-to-face verbal conversation in which the same level of disregard for the (unwritten, yet generally understood) rules governing the spoken word and verbal conversation was equally in play. I then offered several examples of what I was getting about. E.g., would either one of them, I asked, run his sentences (plural) into one long, unbroken and rambling sentence, as he did in writing?; would either of them fail to add inflection and/or emphasis where appropriate?; would either of them speak without/in omission of shorter and longer pauses where needed to facilitate understanding/prevent misunderstanding of what he was saying by the listener? And so on.

Now, my personal experience with such persons who write in a manner/style more or less resembling that which I described in the preceding paragraph is that this “style” of theirs tends to carry over, at least to some extent, to the way they read what others have written, and sometimes (often, even) in spite of the fact that the other person(s) – the other writer(s) – do not commit those sorts of fundamental errors and omissions in their writing as a general rule. It should be fairly obvious to anyone possessing at least average intelligence that this “style” of reading and of writing is like a train wreck waiting to happen; it is analogous to driving around on busy streets with your head in the clouds – eventually you’re going to crash, perhaps into another vehicle, then lay the blame for the crash at the feet of the other driver when the fault was entirely yours.

I run into similar sorts of situations now and again in conversations I get involved in elsewhere on the “interwebz.” For example, a leftist blogger quoted me once upon a time, and in his commentary upon a part of my quoted statements he wrote that I had “exclaimed” the thing I’d written (with which statement he disagreed), as though I’d said, or had written, the statement excitedly or with passion instead of having written it dispassionately, as was in fact the case. I believed then and believe to this day that my interlocutor was being perfectly honest and sincere in reading the alleged exclamation into my statement; that he really believed I had exclaimed what I’d simply and merely stated. But the issue of whether he was sincere or not did not and does not negate the fact that he was simply, albeit sincerely, wrong and needed to be corrected on point. So, I simply pointed out to him that had I intended to state the thing in question with passion (i.e. had I intended to “exclaim” it, as he was accusing me of having done), instead of one of these thingys (.) at the end of my sentence, I’d have inserted one of these thingys (!) in the former’s place. For whatever reason I never bothered to put a great deal of thought to, the blogger in question did not take that explanation very well at all; indeed, he suggested in reply that I “stop quibbling over words,” as well as that I “stop being a wise-ass.” Or maybe it was “smart-ass.” Whichever it was, I readily admit that I sometimes can be a wise-ass, and that, in the particular case in question, I was kind of-sort of being a wise-ass, so I figured I had that one a-comin’ and treated it as such. However, I was certainly not “quibbling” over words, or, rather, over the meaning of words (nor of punctuation marks), and treated that mischaracterization as such as well. Which, you’ll be relieved to know, circles me back to the main impetus for this little write-up.

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If in reading the title of this article you experienced a jarring sensation in your mind and/or an uneasy/queasy feeling in your gut, then mission accomplished. If you didn’t experience one or the other, or both, of those sensations upon reading the statement, then it’s back to remedial reading and grammar lessons for you, mister!

The idea to do a little write-up on this topic occurred to me several months ago as I was reading some of the articles posted at sites I read on at least a semi-regular/semi-daily basis. My employment of the term “theirself” in the post title is one of those instances of my attempting to get readers’ immediate attention by way of emphasizing a real and pervasive problem in writing something absurd. I could have employed the term “themselves” in the same place and accomplished the same thing grammatically speaking, but would you have noticed; or, more importantly, would themselves have had the same jarring effect as you read it even if you had? Perhaps, but I tend to think not, and therefore chose to write the absurd “theirself” instead.

In any case, the writing and posting of this article was delayed so many months in part because my search for a relevant Orthosphere item I intended to link to was initially unsuccessful as I was in the midst of writing the article. Later it dawned on me to simply enter the term grammar into the Orthosphere’s search bar, whereupon the desired entry came right up. Duh! Additionally, completion of the article was further delayed due to a combination of more pressing business getting in the way of, to my own procrastination in getting back to, finishing it. But I usually get around to finishing what I start at some point down the line, and here we have yet one more case in point and another notch in the ol’ belt. It’s certainly not the first time it has happened, and I’m quite sure it won’t be the last, but I again digress.

Here is a short excerpt from the Orthosphere item above-mentioned, which gets to the meat of my original intentions in writing this article:

Too often on sites putatively dedicated to the restoration of the West, or of Tradition, or to Reaction (toward tradition) have I seen writers err grammatically, at the most basic level; even that of the agreement as to number of subject and verb. It makes them look like fools.

I remember reading those statements some short time after the entry was posted and thinking to myself, “yeah, that’s right: professing themselves to be wise, they became fools … Wherefore God also gave them up to obliterating the meaning and proper use of language between themselves.” Or something like that. Do take time to read the linked-to item in its entirety, and, in this particular case, be it known that there is more useful information relevant to the subject to be gleaned from the discussion that entry generated than from the O.P. itself. While you’re at it, take time to read this recent, and relevant, Abbeville Institute item as well; it was in fact my reading the Abbeville Institute article that reminded me I needed to finish writing this article and submit it for publication here at ID. Plus, I promised, in a comment to the article, that I’d do what little I could to get the article “out there” for broader dissemination.

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Using proper grammar in our (written and verbal) communications is extremely important for several equally important reasons as far as yours truly is concerned, not the least of which reasons is that the writer(s) in question thereby avoid “look[ing] like fools,” in Mr. Lawson’s iteration. This of course includes making sure that subject and verb agree in number, as well as properly using punctuation. It is also important to use correct personal pronouns; the idea that it is somehow acceptable to refer to a he or a him (or a she or a her) as “they” or “their” is just vulgar and nuts – not only is there disagreement in number between subject and verb, but also of sex or gender. Here is a case in point wherein the poor woman in question is likely doing flip-flops in her grave over this insanity literally as we speak:

Obviously “Fallen Graver” Nan Hubbard-Kelly was a single (as in one) person, not several (as in more than one) persons. Referring to her as “they” in the possessive form is simply ludicrous; the person(s) who did that ought to be taken behind the proverbial woodshed and, well, nevermind.   

I realize that in many cases this problem is mostly attributable to what I used to refer to as a “long-established habit and custom” formed many years ago by the writers in question. Indeed, quite a number of good writers otherwise nevertheless habitually commit these sorts of errors in their writing. IMHO, it should be stopped; if for no other reason than of refusing to “go along” with the Left’s demand that you join into their unhinged program of destroying everything good and true and beautiful, including language and intelligent communication itself.

There shall be no place for a “singular they” in a Free Dixie, nor for a “gender neutral” one wrongly applied to individual persons of either sex. That is all.

Retake Everything!