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Off-topic, but: > If an owner sells a gallery's art, then the gallery will often cut her off from future purchases I don't understand why some authors defau
by blauditore 9y ago
Off-topic, but:
> If an owner sells a gallery's art, then the gallery will often cut her off from future purchases
I don't understand why some authors default to female pronouns in such cases, given English has a gender-neutral one ("them").
Is this a political statement? It just appears childish to me and makes the article look less professional.
- DanBC 9y agoIt's a stylistic choice. It's a bit weird to get caught by this arbitrary choice and ignore all the others they make.
- Bitcoin_McPonzi 9y agoEnglish has no gender-neutral singular pronoun in modern usage.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> given English has a gender-neutral one ("them") I use "they" and "them" as gender-neutral singular pronouns. There is disagreement on this choice of style. Alternating between gendered pronouns seems to be the preferred alternative to the last decade's (s)he he/she garbage.
- StavrosK 9y agoEh, I still prefer "(s)he" to ze/hir.
- SamBam 9y agoYou wouldn't have even noticed it if it were the male pronoun.
- blauditore 9y agoHighly doubt that, but I probably wouldn't have commented. It's not about the gender itself, but whether a gender pronoun has been chosen conciously, which likely is the case here.
- yoz-y 9y agoProbably because it is directly linked to an anecdote about a particular woman in the industry: > She may have owned the painting, but reselling it at a profit without the gallery’s permission would blackball her from the art industry. And in any case, most of the "anonymous protagonists" in articles are men so why not change it from time to time?
- blauditore 9y agoAh yes, probably. And now I've noticed the author uses "he or she" at some point, so I guess the neutral "they" is indeed disliked by some writers.