Pronoun: Difference between revisions

From The Jolly Contrarian
Jump to navigation Jump to search
No edit summary
No edit summary
Line 1: Line 1:
Lawyers don’t like pronouns because they (pronouns, that is, not lawyers) tend to be shorter and more idiomatic than repeated use of the nouns to which they (the pronouns, not the {{tag|noun}}s) might, if they were used, relate.
{{pe}}{{g}}Lawyers don’t like pronouns because they (pronouns, that is, not lawyers) tend to be shorter and more idiomatic than repeated use of the [[noun]]s to which they (the [[pronoun]]s, not the {{tag|noun}}s) might, if they were used, relate.


The official excuse has probably something to do with imprecision: “you” and “it” can ambiguously refer to the {{tag|subject}} or {{tag|object}} of a sentence: unlike those ultra-precise Germans, we Englanders only half-heartedly [[declension|decline]] our [[pronoun]]s. For all that, the Engish language — complete with pronouns — works unambiguously well in most other linguistic contexts. Besides, Lawyers have their own special form of {{tag|pronoun}} - the {{tag|definition}}.
The official excuse has probably something to do with imprecision: “you” and “it” can ambiguously refer to the {{tag|subject}} or {{tag|object}} of a sentence: unlike those ultra-precise Germans, we Englanders only half-heartedly [[declension|decline]] our [[pronoun]]s. For all that, the English language — complete with [[pronoun]]s — works unambiguously well in most other linguistic contexts. Besides, lawyers have their own special form of {{tag|pronoun}}: the {{tag|definition}}.
 
{{plainenglish}}

Revision as of 12:59, 18 July 2019

Towards more picturesque speech


Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Requests? Insults? We’d love to 📧 hear from you.
Sign up for our newsletter.

The Jolly Contrarian’s Glossary
The snippy guide to financial services lingo.™


Index — Click the ᐅ to expand:

Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Requests? Insults? We’d love to 📧 hear from you.
Sign up for our newsletter.

Lawyers don’t like pronouns because they (pronouns, that is, not lawyers) tend to be shorter and more idiomatic than repeated use of the nouns to which they (the pronouns, not the nouns) might, if they were used, relate.

The official excuse has probably something to do with imprecision: “you” and “it” can ambiguously refer to the subject or object of a sentence: unlike those ultra-precise Germans, we Englanders only half-heartedly decline our pronouns. For all that, the English language — complete with pronouns — works unambiguously well in most other linguistic contexts. Besides, lawyers have their own special form of pronoun: the definition.