Individuals

[thirdcrank]

Burchfield's Third Edition of Fowler has a detailed entry on this but it runs to half a page so I don't intend to retype it here or to try to summarize it which would seem impertinent.

Anyway, I see there's now a new edition. They do seem to be published with increasing frequency. £15-86 at Amozon for anybody who likes to feel they've been proved right.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fowlers-Dictio ... lish+usage

[661-Pete]

I'm not complaining about the word "individual" but it's use as a noun to describe a single separate person.
Individual is opposite to general. There are many individual things in the world, but they are things, not people. People deserve better than being called "an individual".

"Individual" has since time immemorial been used as a noun, to refer to a person, etc. From my copy of Chambers:

Individual n a single person, animal, plant or thing considered as a separate member of its species or as having an independent existence; a person (inf)

Note that the "(inf)" means "informal", but informal language still has its place.

Talking of which, and seeing as this is a thread essentially about English usage, it would not be out-of-place, surely, to draw attention to the incorrect use of apostrophes...?

[Mick F]

Yes, informal it's fine.
Not formal.

"Its use" is correct.

"Its" is used but when "it's" refers to "it is" ............ and to use the possessive apostrophe would be confusing.

[thirdcrank]

... but it's use as a noun ...

I speak as a mere foot soldier in the Greengrocers Patrol, of which my wife is regimental colonel.

[Mick F]

I would agree if I'd said it's used as a noun, but I said its use as a noun.

You don't insert an apostrophe in its when it's a possessive. It confuses the reader.


Edit:
I made a mistake.
I meant to mean its, but said it's.
Typo.

[661-Pete]

Hooray! Mick F got there in the end!

[Cugel]

Is there such a thing as an individual? I've never met one. Every person I meet seems composed of, and enmeshed in, a great vortex of other persons, not to mention the historical meme-nets in which we all are caught, via the language and all it's Pandora escapees.

Including "me" (whatever that is).

Mind, there is the odd wolf-boy ... but even those lads tend to be part of a pack.

Even our physical singularity is an illusion, since a large percentage of "me" is composed on various bugs and bits with a life of their own, including the gut-bugs who will help you digest your meat & three veg one day but consume the rest of your body should you weaken to a significant degree! They don't mind if "you" die as you are as delicious as the three veg or perhaps more so.

As to the Ayn Rand heroic variety of individual, supposedly generating wonderful new stuff in top-entrepreneur fashion entirely out of their own clever heads with no reference to the other humans or cultures or societies or their parents or their teachers or.... anyone - why, the rascals are actually stealing the notions and designs of countless others who went before them, back to the year dot! Then they paint them a different colour and call them Apple.........

Individuals? Pah!

Cugel, just another cipher in The Great Human Spectacle.

[Cyril Haearn]

... but it's use as a noun ...

I speak as a mere foot soldier in the Greengrocers Patrol, of which my wife is regimental colonel.

Perhaps you could help younger fora members by explaining what a Greengrocer is (was?)

[Cyril Haearn]

I love the diversity of language, even police language
Proceed, individual, alleged offence. There must be plenty more, +99
..
I prefer to get heated up about incorrect use of language, people write about "keeping to the speed limit" when I think they should be using "below" and "maximum"
Unless they are writing about *minimum* speed limits of course

[Mick F]

What about "persons or persons unknown"?
Why not "individuals or individuals unknown"? Too long and difficult to say perhaps.

If they can use "person", why do they use "individual" at all?

[661-Pete]

I speak as a mere foot soldier in the Greengrocers Patrol, of which my wife is regimental colonel.

Perhaps you could help younger fora members by explaining what a Greengrocer is (was?)

That's easy! Greengrocer's were friendly high-street purveyor's of apple's, pear's, potato's, cabbage's, and apostrophe's. Those last were indisputably their biggest-selling and most popular produce...

[Mick F]

There's a pub in the village.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@50.52443 ... 312!8i6656
They now have a blackboard outside advertising eat-in or take-away pasty's.

[philvantwo]

You'll have to grow a beard Mick F, then you can go to that pub for a hairy biker breakfast!!