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Individuals/People/Persons
People Need People
The article attributed new developments in a banking scandal to “individuals who have direct knowledge of the investigation.” Why “individuals”? Why not “people”? The answer is that bureaucratese is infectious. At times it’s necessary to distinguish between individuals and groups, so “individual,” singular and plural, has its uses as a noun. Otherwise, such solid old English words as “man,” “woman” and “people” are just fine. (And “people” is almost always preferable to the stilted “persons,” except on signs about restaurant occupancy, where the bureaucrats rule. See below.)
—CJR, Nov/Dec 1999
After reading that last, Margo Young, director of academic publications at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Business Administration, e-mailed with a question.
She noted that in “Elements of Style” by Strunk and White, a kind of mini-bible for generations of American expository writers, “persons” gets preference for some contexts. The good book declares: “The word people is best not used with words of number, in place of persons. If of ‘six people’ five went away, how many people would be left behind? Answer: one people.” Citing that passage, Ms. Young asked, “Whom should we use today as the standard: Streisand or Strunk and White?”
As respected as Strunk and White should be, we’re better off with Streisand on this one. “Persons” has never seemed natural, but a lot of us learned to use it years ago as part of the near-ubiquitous Associated Press style. Times change. It’s no longer style at the A.P. or, also in a change, at the New York Times. Both prescribe “people” except for such established idioms as “displaced persons” and “missing persons.”
And the Strunk and White argument didn’t really make sense. If we started with 45,000 people (would anyone, anywhere, say “persons”? ) at a football game and all but one left the stadium, how many, and what, would be left? Answer: one person. That’s what would be left in the S & W example, too. For centuries, the natural, standard English plural for “person” has been “people.” And S & W to the contrary notwithstanding, using “people” as an all-purpose plural never locked anyone into using “people” as a singular.
CJR
