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> I had a college friend who worked for one of the "major" enterprise analyst companies. My friend had a degree in French literature and needed a paying job. Th
by dctoedt 7y ago
> I had a college friend who worked for one of the "major" enterprise analyst companies. My friend had a degree in French literature and needed a paying job. They could write well, so in exchange for a low salary plus benefits they wrote reports on laptops, CNC tools, servers, you name it. They never actually clapped eyes on an actual CNC mill until visiting me one day at work.
<rant> The last two sentences of this quotation illustrate the perniciousness of they as a singular pronoun for an individual. The first rule of writing (unless you're a egomaniac) is Serve Your Reader; when a reader encounters these last two sentences, it disserves her to force her to look backwards at context to figure out how many individuals the writer is talking about in those sentences. If you want to be inclusive, then just use she as your gender-neutral pronoun, as here.</rant>
- gumby 7y agoI understand your pain, but I did the right thing. I used to do as you suggest but my message is a good example of the sexism problem as it would imply the stereotype of the dumb female humanities major. The singular “they” has a long history.* Yes, words change (“elite”, “peas”, and even “you” as the article points out). But I think it is past time to put the tyranny of a prescriptivist plural-restricted “they” to bed. https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they/ https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they...
- dctoedt 7y agoI understand the sexism concern; in situations where the generic person is being portrayed in a possibly-negative light, I use "he" as the generic pronoun. (I'm male, incidentally; my late mother and MIL were, and my wife, daughter, sisters, and SILs are: (A) educated professionals, and (B) quite capable of ... how shall I put this ... taking umbrage if I say something sexist <g>.)