Just How Many Collarbones Do You Have?

In Pilates class this morning, the instructor at one point said, “You should all have your arms in front of your collarbones.” My thoughts immediately wandered from the state of my core to the vexations of grammar. The instructor, Cathy, had wandered into a syntactical briar patch that I had often found myself in, never once escaping without multiple scratches.

The problem, as you might have discerned, lies in that word collarbones. It sounds as if she were saying that we each had more than one ...