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And speaking of singular versus plural

And speaking of singular versus plural: Late last night, in response to the update to this post of mine from yesterday, I received the following email from Seventh Circuit Judge Richard A. Posner:

Dear Prof. Bashman, to say "ostriches hide their heads in the sand" would imply that each ostrich had more than one head.

Richard Posner

P.S. And yes, canards fly--glad you caught the pun.

Of course, it could be said that Judge Posner's sentence, which states that "The reference of course is to the legend that ostriches when frightened bury their head in the sand," implies that multiple ostriches share a single head, just as some conjoined twins sometimes share a single bodily organ. One solution is to rewrite the sentence in the singular, although that might require assigning a gender to the ostrich in question or using the "his or her" construct.

Full post as published by How Appealing on June 26, 2008 (boomark / email).