"What would you like to focus on during this session?" Her words hung in the air like toothpicks searching for a mouth to rest in.

There would be no fire drill today.

How many are you refering to?

An individual decided that their thoughts were out of sync. In fact, in only one sentence, the individual had lost his or her individuality! "How could this happen?" one might ask. The answer lies in the mischievous nature of pronouns. In this politically-correct world, one cannot simply use the pronoun "he" in reference to something that could be either male or female. However, using "his or her" ofter appears too cumbersome for writers. That is where the pronoun "their" makes its move. It sneaks into a sentence, tricking writers into believing that they can refer back to a singular item. But "their" is a trickster . . .

Fortunately, the writing center has found a way to beat and satisfy this challenging foe. First, one can use "he or she" to deny "their" any place in the text. But even better than that, one can use "their" but change the noun that it references to the plural. That way, individuals will not lose their individuality!

The Manual

We have style manuals for the three main writing styles: Turabian, APA, and MLA. This is so that everybody will have a standard to refer to when they write. However, I wish that we had style automatics instead. That way, I would not have to look up the correct way to cite a webpage in Turabian--it would automatically cite it correctly for me. As it is, I must manually look up each entry to ensure that I have properly adhered to the guidelines listed therein. That takes time . . . .

Therefore, I see that I have only two options before me. I can either memorize each of the style manuals so that I will not need to look up information in them, or I can become just familiar enough with them so that I can quickly look up the information I need. Similar to the periodic table of elements or the nutrition information on the back of a can of pork n' beans, I think I will choose the latter.

There once was a student named Samuel,
Who worked on his writing assignment.
He opened his manual,
And became the man who all-
People adored as divine-sent.