Everyman and their houses

The English language is suffering as writers and speakers try to popularise it with a kind of deliberate dumbing down: "We're not fussy about grammar", they seem to be saying: "we're like you."

Either Radio Times (as I have complained before) condones sloppy English as a matter of policy, or else its editorial staff have never studied the language and are unable to edit.

Last month a certain article referred, with some justification, to us Brits - my slang, sorry - as "one of the most owner-occupied, indebted nations in the world. One where everyone you knew was perpetually remodelling their houses and broom-cupboard flats, and where, quite apart from the places they actually lived, a good many had become part-time property-developers". Now the phrase "owner-occupied nation" is a pleasant witticism: let it pass. But "Everyone you knew was remodelling their houses" is just lazy, clumsy English.

"Everyone (singular) was . . ." Quite correct. But "their" reverts to plural (perhaps to avoid the dilemma of "his or her"; and "houses" is plural too - as if everyone you knew had more than one house. Now some perhaps did - but multiple ownership is described later on in the article, as a separate matter.

Why not edit that muddled passage in the form: "All one's friends seemed to be perpetually remodelling their houses" ? (True, perhaps, if your friends were of a certain class.) As a specimen of English prose, even "Everyone seemed to be remodelling their houses" would be just about permissible, if we accept the term 'everyone' as a virtual plural: but "was remodelling their houses" is unnecessarily poor English, and can hardly be said to be more understandable or acceptable to the general public than proper English - unless you hold to the principle that sloppy English in itself makes for better reading.

Everyman and their houses