{"id":2550,"date":"2012-07-07T15:10:22","date_gmt":"2012-07-07T21:10:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2550"},"modified":"2012-07-08T20:30:09","modified_gmt":"2012-07-09T02:30:09","slug":"whosever-language-this-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2550","title":{"rendered":"Whosever Language This Is"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This doesn&#8217;t happen too often, but today it stopped me cold: I was writing a paragraph from <em>Ten Gentle Opportunities<\/em> and couldn&#8217;t decide which of two usages was the right one. When there are two ways to say something, I generally have an intuitive sense for which is the more correct way, based on what I&#8217;ve read as much as what I&#8217;ve learned of proper grammar. This is one of the benefits of reading much and broadly.<\/p>\n<p>Today I got stuck between two usages that both felt a little wrong, and both almost precisely the same measure of right. Here&#8217;s the sentence in question, done the way I learned it way back in the Precambrian:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"margin-right: 0px;\" dir=\"ltr\"><p>Carolyn stabbed the End Call button, and rose to go fetch her intern, or whosever intern he was.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It sounded a little off. The other way also sounded a little off:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Carolyn stabbed the End Call button, and rose to go fetch her intern, or whoever&#8217;s intern he was.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>My (moldy) style books all say &#8220;whosever&#8221; but I hear &#8220;whoever&#8217;s&#8221; a lot more in recent writing. I think what we&#8217;re seeing here is a usage at the tipping point. In a few more years, &#8220;whosever&#8221; will become an archaism, and people will look at you funny when you say it.<\/p>\n<p>Is this good or not? I don&#8217;t know. Language evolves; sound and sense and all that. About the only thing I&#8217;m certain of is that I&#8217;m old. But I knew that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This doesn&#8217;t happen too often, but today it stopped me cold: I was writing a paragraph from Ten Gentle Opportunities and couldn&#8217;t decide which of two usages was the right one. When there are two ways to say something, I generally have an intuitive sense for which is the more correct way, based on what [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[73,20],"class_list":["post-2550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daybook","tag-language","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2550"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2558,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2550\/revisions\/2558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}