What is grammatically wrong with the following sentence?
"If someone feels they haven’t been treated respectfully, the odds are they’re right."
Please see my answer to your last post. Note in this sentence there are two pronoun errors.
We'll be glad to check your answer.
It would be better here to change the subject noun than to change the pronouns.
So would I change it to the following:
The word someone is singular. Therefore you would change they’re to he or she.
You could do it that way -- but Guru's suggestion is better and not as awkward. Change someone to a plural pronoun.
Or a plural noun.
The sentence "If someone feels they haven’t been treated respectfully, the odds are they’re right" is grammatically incorrect because it contains a disagreement in number between the pronouns "someone" and "they." "Someone" is singular, whereas "they" is plural. This inconsistency in grammatical number is considered an error in formal writing.
To correct this sentence, you have a few options:
1. Option 1: Use a gender-neutral pronoun:
"If someone feels they haven't been treated respectfully, the odds are they're right."
In this case, "they" is used as a gender-neutral pronoun to agree with the singular noun "someone." This is a common practice when the individual's gender is unknown or when you want to avoid assumptions about their gender.
2. Option 2: Use the plural form:
"If people feel they haven't been treated respectfully, the odds are they're right."
In this case, you switch from a singular noun ("someone") to a plural noun ("people"), allowing you to use the plural pronoun "they" to maintain grammatical consistency.
Both of these options provide grammatically correct alternatives to the original sentence.