This Is Why We Don’t Use ‘One’


I visited the Wikipedia pronouns page because we’ve hired some Southerners which stemmed a work discussion about “you all” filling in as the second person pronoun, with “all y’all” meaning a specific number of “you all”.

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Pronouns are just a mess. We’ve given up the fight on “his or hers” and went with “theirs” (or rewrite).

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Seriously, One The Pronoun? I’ve always explained that you don’t punctuate the passive pronoun it as “it’s” because you wouldn’t write, “The man trained the dog to put it’s paw in hi’s hand.” And now you give me one’s as the possessive pronoun.

And on top of that it isn’t Oneself? Or Onesself? It’s onself? Really?

Of course, I’m using Wikipedia as a reliable source. That’s my problem. Of course, I have too many books to find my Chicago Manual of Style.


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