(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

[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.