Re: At peace with Debian (was: This is the last war...)
On Sun, Jul 14, 2002 at 05:24:39PM -0700, David Wright wrote:
> > No professional in their right mind...
>
> Argh! "s/he" may be distracting but is at least arguably not
> gramatically wrong. "Professional" is singular; "their" is plural. You
> cannot use one as a substitute for the other.
Okay, that is the argument that 19th century grammarians used to promote
"he" over "they". But...
"God send everyone their heart's desire"
-- Shakespeare
"It's enough to drive anyone out of their senses."
-- George Bernard Shaw
"If anyone doubts that democracy is alive and well, let them come to New
Hampshire."
-- Ronald Reagan
I see no problem using "their" or "they" in a singular sense. It's alot
less offensive, IMHO, than "s/he" which can't make up its mind what it
is and can't be spoken.
"""
GENERIC PRONOUN
... English does not have a singular equivalent for /u/, but the
/he/-group of pronouns has traditionally been called generic ...
The use of generic /he/ is, however, often ambiguous ... efforts
have been made ... to circumvent it. These include ... (8) Plurals
rather than singulars wherever possible: "/the/ doctor ... /he/" changed
to "/doctors/ ... /they/". This appears to be a widespread strategy to
avoid the problem. ...
"""
-- _Oxford Companion to The English Language_, 1992
The book devotes a paragraph to the increasing usage of "singular they",
and notes the history of such usage dating to the 16c.
There are plenty of English words that have dual singular and plural
roles: you, deer, sheep, etc. No reason "they" shouldn't be in that
category...
> Guess what: no matter how much you agonized over it when you were young
> first discovered feminism, you can't eliminate the "generic masculine"
> construction in English without distracting your reader or being wrong.
BTW, I never "agonized" over the matter and I knew about feminism well
before I ever started thinking about non-sexist writing. So, you can
leave your condescending tone at the door.
--
Eric G. Miller <egm2@jps.net>
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