4 ms·
>The historically "correct" way to do it in English was just to default to masculine unless the person in question was known to be a woman. I realize the impli
by simias 7y ago
>The historically "correct" way to do it in English was just to default to masculine unless the person in question was known to be a woman.
I realize the implication of you putting "correct" between quotes but I want to point out that it really depends what time frame you have in mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they#Older_usage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they#Older_usage
The prescription that "he" be used as gender-neutral is, in the grand scheme of things, fairly recent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they#Older_usage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they#Older_usage
>The earliest known explicit recommendation by a grammarian to use the generic he rather than they in formal English is Ann Fisher's mid-18th century A New Grammar[...]
Meanwhile gender-neutral singular "they" has been used by some authors for much longer:
>"Eche on in þer craft ys wijs." ("Each one in their craft is wise.") — Wycliffe's Bible, Ecclus. 38.35 (1382)
- ghaff 7y agoBy correct, in this context, I mostly meant English (especially American English) style guides and similar that were published over a number of decades prior to maybe ten years or so ago. I'm sure there are lots of individual examples that don't follow that timeline though. After people started to become more generally sensitive to gender role assumptions and language that reinforced those assumptions, I can recall lots of examples of "he/she" constructions and/or writing examples in a way that you had both a male engineer and a female engineer. The preference for using singular they in part because it doesn't still rely on binary pronouns is relatively recent in my personal experience--at least in formal writing.