[cdumler]

Being an old, grey beard, it's been interesting to see language change in my lifetime. Things I learned:

  * Third-person singular indefinite ("he or she") can be replaced with third-person plural ("they").  Of course, a lot of changes around recognizing gender.
  * Final punctuation within the quote at the end of sentence (Did you just say "what?") can be placed after the final quote if the quote is for a literal string (ie, The password is "123456".)
  * Companies switched from being singular plurals ("Google is deprecating another product.") to plural singulars ("Google are deprecating another product.")
  * Moving away from verbed nouns ("Google it") to multipart verbs ("search it up").
  * Double infinitives ("to try to eat") getting changed to an infinitive and conjunction ("to try and eat").

One thing I am very said about is just how lack luster both of my kid's hand writing is. My eldest is in high-school and her hand writing is horrible. Partly because she has little use for long-form writing (forget cursive) and because they rely on the spell checker.

[jasonpeacock]

Singular "they" has been around for a very long time, and used naturally without anyone noticing it as unusual, until recently when there's been more gender discussion and people suddenly realizing they were already recognizing genderless people without knowing it ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they

[nmeofthestate]

You're right - that has been around for a long long time. But I feel like I've seen a general increase in its usage that can make writing more ambiguous to parse. Like we already know the gender of someone being written about in a sentence, but they become referred to as "they" at random - it's a subtle effect. I'm talking about examples unrelated to "gender stuff" but perhaps that's what's made the usage more popular among younger writers.

[fennecfoxy]

Tbf so many instances they don't use "they" but "he or she"...where my thinking is, not only is it more inclusive but it's actually easier to just use "they"?

[cubefox]

> and people suddenly realizing they were already recognizing genderless people without knowing it ;)

They weren't recognizing genderless people just because they used "they" when the gender was unknown ;)

[xdennis]

> people suddenly realizing they were already recognizing genderless people without knowing it ;)

Not true. It was used in the past to refer to an unknown person. I.e. "When a candidate arrives given them the test." You don't know what sex the candidate is before he arrives and instead of saying "he or she" you say "they".

But nowadays people use it as a superclass of he and she: "I asked my boss for a raise but they refused". It doesn't make any sense. You know very well what sex your boss is, but "they" is used for virtue signaling. It's a way of saying "I know my boss is a man, but I'm going to use they because a woman could do just a good a job and he, sorry, they does."

[zargon]

> Companies switched from being singular plurals ("Google is deprecating another product.") to plural singulars ("Google are deprecating another product.")

I thought this was just a difference between American and British English.

[emaro]

It's the first time I see a company's name used like that.

[ldoughty]

Being an old grey beard you probably know these... but for others:

> * Final punctuation within the quote at the end of sentence (Did you just say "what?") can be placed after the final quote if the quote is for a literal string (ie, The password is "123456".)

Prior to movable type printing presses, the British "logical quotation" system was the norm for English.

This changed, and is credited to american newspapers, because of movable type. I've heard different reasoning (from being less likely to break, or to looking cleaner), but both point to printers. Even the alternate name for this quotation style is "typesetters quotation." <== the period inside the quote to end that sentence!

Being a form of mass media, this meant that a lot of mass produced works now 'promoted' by proxy this typesetters quotation style.

Source for some more info on the above: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_marks_in_English

> * Moving away from verbed nouns ("Google it") to multipart verbs ("search it up").

This is purely branding. In the US, if people say "Google it", it creates a synonym between "Google" and "Search", which hurts cases for Google in defending their brand... If it gets too weak, then you or I could make a "Google Booster" company, which focuses on improving search engine rankings in general -- not just Google, and with no direct business relation with Google

See: Kleenex, Band-aid, ChapStick, Crock-pot, Jacuzzi

[mostlysimilar]

> * Companies switched from being singular plurals ("Google is deprecating another product.") to plural singulars ("Google are deprecating another product.")

> * Moving away from verbed nouns ("Google it") to multipart verbs ("search it up").

Resist! Google is trying to get you to stop Googling things, but we don't have to listen to the corporate overlords.

[nmeofthestate]

I think organisations (companies, teams) being singular/plural differs depending on what country you're in, so perhaps this is a bleeding across of conventions due to globalisation.

[OJFord]

> Double infinitives ("to try to eat") getting changed to an infinitive and conjunction ("to try and eat").

Or worse, 'to try eat', 'to go get', etc.

It's very American to my ear, but it's certainly invading.

Another corruption triple like that is to do something 'accidentally' / 'by accident' / 'on accident'.

[int_19h]

"go" + verb is a specific idiom, but I can't say that "try eat" is common or widely accepted as correct in American English.

[unsupp0rted]

I bet her calligraphy sucks too. And is she any good at milking a cow?

In 2024 there's no need to feel sad about deprecated (or now niche) skills being lackluster.

I'd be more concerned if she couldn't find information efficiently when she goes searching for it. That's a skill that mustn't be lackluster.

[cubefox]

> * Companies switched from being singular plurals ("Google is deprecating another product.") to plural singulars ("Google are deprecating another product.")

I think that's just a grammatical error that people (sometimes) make, and it isn't even specific to English.

[ghayes]

Is “search it up” much different from a similar phrase “search for it”? The structure of the original quote is “imperative verb, direct object, adverb” but I wouldn’t call that a change in grammar so much as a change in diction.

[layer8]

It’s adapted from “look it up”. Or maybe more specifically, it’s “look it up using internet search”.

[talideon]

Your "plural singulars" have been the normal way of doing things in much of the Anglosphere outside of North America for quite some time.