(no subject)

[owlectomy]

I hadn't heard Geoff Pullum's ringing endorsement of singular "they" before. I'm a fan of singular "they," personally, but it's very convincing in how awful some of the alternatives sound:

A journalist can’t be so shy that he or she can’t bring himself or herself to go up to a stranger he or she sees and ask him or her to give him or her his or her opinion.’

Oh? 'He' is gender-neutral? Well--


‘Was it your father or your mother who hurt himself?’

Good enough for Jane Austen and W.H. Auden is good enough for me.

Comments

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

That's beautiful. I have it book-marked. Though I must say, citing Austen as a source of correct English usage makes me a touch antsy, because she broke so many rules so often. Her punctuation in particular is, well, her own system. What *was* her editor thinking of?

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

I don't mind it but I also can't tell my tutees to do it, because their teachers will take off points. In this case it's easy to rewrite with plurals:
"Journalists can’t be so shy that they can’t bring themselves to go up to strangers and ask them to give their opinions."

[takumashii.livejournal.com]

No, I certainly wouldn't tell students to do it--it doesn't matter whether or not it's wrong, just as long as a certain number of people think that it's wrong. I used to very diligently rewrite with plurals. But I'm still glad to be vindicated in my conviction that it's a silly rule.

[ravenstormcrow.livejournal.com]

Singular "they" used to be standard English, or as standard as English got before the advent of Webster's Dictionary and similar. I've taken to using it myself, because I am also not fond of "sie," "zie," "hir," and similar "gender-neutral" constructions. Although I might still write "wo/man" or "God/dess" where appropriate.

[ravenstormcrow.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I'm with you on the ridiculousness of the idea that "he" could EVER be gender-neutral. Every time I suggest using "she" as the neutral pronoun or "womankind" in place of "mankind" I get some guy howling at me about how it doesn't include him. Well, there you go.