English grammar [was: At peace with Debian (was: This is the last war...)]
David Wright <ichbin@shadlen.org> 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.
*Their* may be singular, though nonstandard. For example, Random House
(1975) sez: *2*. _Nonstandard_ (used after an indefinite singular
antecedent in place of the definite masculine form "his" or the
definite feminine form "her"); _Somebody left their book on the
table._
On the plus side of your argument, Fowler writes:
"... Whether that reluctance[1] is less felt by the male is
doubtful; at any rate the OED quotes examples from Fielding
(_Everyone in the house were in their beds._) ...
It also says nothing more severe of the use than that it is
'Not favoured by grammarians'. In colloquial usage the
inconvenience of having no common-sex personal pronoun in the
singular has proved stronger than respect for the grammarians, and
the one that is available in the plural is made to serve for the
singular too. But in prose their disfavour is not treated so
lightly." ...
-- A Dictionary Of Modern English Usage, H. W. Fowler, 1965
[1]
To substitute the indefinite plural for the definite singular. jec
> 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.
One can; such a style requires careful editing.
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