| 词组 | people, persons |
| 释义 | people, persons The questioning of the use of people to mean persons began in the middle of the 19th century. Alford 1866 mentions a correspondent who wrote in to object to the expression several people; he said it ought always to be several persons. Alford was lukewarm to the proposal. Bardeen 1883 lists another 19th-century commentator, William Mathews, who in his Words; Their Use and Abuse, 1876, seems not to have objected to many people. Around the turn of the century things heated up. People for persons went on the "Don't List" of the New York Herald and thereafter became a staple of the journalistic usage writers (for instance, Bierce 1909, Hyde 1926, Bernstein 1962, 1965, 1971, Copperud 1964, 1970, 1980, Bremner 1980, Safire 1982, Kilpatrick 1984). Our files contain some traces of what must have been a raging dispute on the subject in the pages of the Washington (D.C.) Times in 1915 and 1916. The chief figure in the dispute seems to have been an energetic letter writer named Francis de Sales Ryan, who peppered the paper with objections to usages such as a Funk & Wag-nails advertisement urging readers to "do what 1,500,000 other people are doing—read the Literary Digest." Ryan claimed to have the staffs of all other newspapers in Washington on his side, and he cited dictionaries liberally. He seems to have been willing to spar with such other newspaper readers as undertook to rebut him. The newspaper finally ran a large story (25 Feb. 1916) in which they invoked the authority of Dr. C. Alphonso Smith of the University of Virginia, who was billed as the "highest authority on precise word meaning in the United States," to defend the usage. Our records do not tell us whether this authority overmatched Mr. Ryan or not. Like many controversial usages examined in this book, people managed to hold its place while the grounds of dispute shifted. At first people was objected to when the context gave any indication that the word was thought of as a plural—several and many were the disputed modifiers. Then followed the dispute about numerical designators—1,500,000, a thousand, etc. More recently the use of round numbers with people has been declared acceptable, but some still object to use with specific numbers, like five or two. Safire 1982 reports that an Associated Press style manual revised around 1980 prescribes people for all plural uses. Safire says this decision was greeted with joy by some people working in the New York Times newsroom, where the style manual still prescribed persons with specific numbers. Kilpatrick 1984 disagrees with the AP decision. The dictionaries of the time seem to have provided fuel for the objections of Francis de Sales Ryan and other critics. The use of people with a preceding number seems to have been missed by the OED, Webster 1909, the Century, and Funk & Wagnalls. If the dictionaries missed the use, the grammarians did not. Poutsma 1904-26 cited Dickens ("A Christmas Carol") and Punch. Jespersen 1909-49 found the usage to be as old as Chaucer's "a thousand peple"; he cited as later examples Defoe, Dickens, Disraeli, and others. He also found the construction one or two people in Dickens and H. G. Wells. It is reassuring, at least, to know that recent handbooks and style books will now allow you to use people as Chaucer did nearly 600 years ago or as Dickens did a century or more ago. Sometimes progress is slow. Here are modern examples of most of the originally disputed usages: • ... many people who feel that the federal funds have not always been wisely spent —Lucy Eisenberg, Harper's, November 1971 • More than 1,500 people ... attended —Ron Fimrite, Sports Illustrated, 20 Mar. 1978 • ... equipped to seat six people comfortably — Esquire, April 1973 • I told him I could give him a couple of people who would look after him —Ernest Hemingway, "Miss Mary's Lion," 1956 But what about persons? It has not vanished from these contexts. We find it chosen as an alternative where people has just been used: • Some 400,000 people, most of them young persons —Current Biography, June 1968 • ... program involving young people, led by persons in their own generation —John Cogley, Center Mag., September-October 1972 • ... has peopled his story with real persons —Liz Smith, New York, 9 Feb. 1976 We find it used naturally where the older style books would require it: • ... almost one million persons are today confined — Alan M. Dershowitz, Psychology Today, February 1969 • ... put 100,000 hard-core unemployed persons to work —Henry Ford II, Michigan Business Rev., July 1968 • ... only three persons lost their lives —Current Biography, May 1966 And occasionally it is put in place of people by inattentive writers and editors, as in this example from Winners & Sinners: • Mike Curtis, who likes to hit persons hard, slammed his 232 pounds into ... the Ram running back — N.Y. Times, 9 Nov. 1971 You can safely follow your ear in your choice of people or persons after a number—or simply use people, in accordance with the latest advisories. |
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