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> Who is the "they" here? Remember that we haven't been told that Dex is a genderless person yet. Which means "they" probably means more than one person. Dex's

> Who is the "they" here? Remember that we haven't been told that Dex is a genderless person yet. Which means "they" probably means more than one person. Dex's relationship with gender is unambiguous-- before that sentence are multiple paragraphs where Dex is referred to exclusively with "they" and "they" refers only to Dex. We don't need to be told Sister Mara is a woman, she is just called she. This is an unreasonable standard that doesn't apply to any other pronoun. > They idea that Dex is genderless and using "they" to deal with that didn't even occur to me until much later. I can even tell this "they" you use in the beginning is a typo or something due to the grammatical structure of the sentence. Are you sure the writer's mastery of English is the problem, here? Or maybe you're just personally unfamiliar with third person singular pronouns, and fall under the category of another commenter who admitted that their first experience with "she" protagonists felt different? (btw, is it ambiguous which "they" is being referred to there?)

stevenAthompson 3y ago
> >“No,” Dex said. Formal study had its place, but they’d done that before, and learning by doing was an equally valid path. “I want to self-teach.” Does the "they'd" in the above sentence mean Dex, or the plural of Sister Mara and Dex, or some other grouping of x + Dex? Normally it would mean a group, but in this case we can no longer be certain since Dex alone is considered a "They". As far as I can tell there is literally no way to determine that without asking the author directly. As I said above, it could just be me. I'm not an English professor, and don't claim to be. The extra "y" was a typo.
- KittenInABox 3y ago
  >Does the "they'd" in the above sentence mean Dex, or the plural of Sister Mara and Dex, or some other grouping of x + Dex? It very clearly refers to Dex, because Dex is the subject of the sentence prior and there's no indication of a shared experience. It literally follows that Dex is denying something, and the sentence follows the structure of the very same denial ("X, but Y"). It's really not ambiguous at all. If it was ambiguous to refer to Dex as "they" there because "they" can refer to multiple people, you must hate if this scene had Dex use "she" when Sister Mara exists in the same conversation. This short story starts with two women: https://www.tor.com/2023/12/13/the-sound-of-reindeer-lyndsie-manusos/ https://www.tor.com/2023/12/13/the-sound-of-reindeer-lyndsie... The first thing Ada Cirillo noticed on the way to her girlfriend’s family’s Christmas Eve party was the way Lil looked out the window. Usually Lil was the talkative type, the beak that broke through Ada’s shell and hurled her out to experience the world. But as they drove through the limestone-blasted roadways of Missouri toward Saint Charles, where Lil’s parents resided, Lil was quiet. Distant. She didn’t rest her hand on Ada’s knee as Ada drove through the light crust of snow on the highway. Instead, both hands knotted together in her lap. It's the exact same techniques that Becky Chambers is using here. Or do you just genuinely have difficulty with pronouns as a grammatical concept?
  - stevenAthompson 3y ago
    I don't think that it's clear at all, but I suppose that's subjective. To me it's much more difficult to parse and got in the way of my enjoyment of an otherwise excellent book. I'd have much preferred "new" pronouns like xe/xer/xem. I've read thousands of books, and changing an old word to mean new things (but only under specific circumstances) is much more difficult for me than learning a new word. I Googled it, and for what it's worth, the APA recommends against the singular "they" because they also think it can be confusing (except in cases of gender diversity): https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2015/11/the-use-of-singular-they-in-apa-style.html https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2015/11/the-use-of-singul... The Chicago Style guide is much the same. I don't think either mean's to say that it automatically becomes less confusing when gender diversity is involved, it's just that we don't have better options. It's sci-fi. If we're imaging a better future, can't we also imagine some new pronouns that don't confuse people?
  - stevenAthompson 3y ago
    Just for giggles I asked Bing It also thinks that sentence refers to Dex and another person. >Hello, this is Bing. I can help you with your question. The word “they’d” is a contraction of either “they had” or “they would”. In this sentence, it means “they had”. It refers to the subject of the previous clause, which is Dex and an implied other person. The sentence implies that Dex and someone else had done formal study before, but now Dex wants to self-teach.

stevenAthompson 3y ago

> >“No,” Dex said. Formal study had its place, but they’d done that before, and learning by doing was an equally valid path. “I want to self-teach.” Does the "they'd" in the above sentence mean Dex, or the plural of Sister Mara and Dex, or some other grouping of x + Dex? Normally it would mean a group, but in this case we can no longer be certain since Dex alone is considered a "They". As far as I can tell there is literally no way to determine that without asking the author directly. As I said above, it could just be me. I'm not an English professor, and don't claim to be. The extra "y" was a typo.

KittenInABox 3y ago
>Does the "they'd" in the above sentence mean Dex, or the plural of Sister Mara and Dex, or some other grouping of x + Dex? It very clearly refers to Dex, because Dex is the subject of the sentence prior and there's no indication of a shared experience. It literally follows that Dex is denying something, and the sentence follows the structure of the very same denial ("X, but Y"). It's really not ambiguous at all. If it was ambiguous to refer to Dex as "they" there because "they" can refer to multiple people, you must hate if this scene had Dex use "she" when Sister Mara exists in the same conversation. This short story starts with two women: https://www.tor.com/2023/12/13/the-sound-of-reindeer-lyndsie-manusos/ https://www.tor.com/2023/12/13/the-sound-of-reindeer-lyndsie... The first thing Ada Cirillo noticed on the way to her girlfriend’s family’s Christmas Eve party was the way Lil looked out the window. Usually Lil was the talkative type, the beak that broke through Ada’s shell and hurled her out to experience the world. But as they drove through the limestone-blasted roadways of Missouri toward Saint Charles, where Lil’s parents resided, Lil was quiet. Distant. She didn’t rest her hand on Ada’s knee as Ada drove through the light crust of snow on the highway. Instead, both hands knotted together in her lap. It's the exact same techniques that Becky Chambers is using here. Or do you just genuinely have difficulty with pronouns as a grammatical concept?
- stevenAthompson 3y ago
  I don't think that it's clear at all, but I suppose that's subjective. To me it's much more difficult to parse and got in the way of my enjoyment of an otherwise excellent book. I'd have much preferred "new" pronouns like xe/xer/xem. I've read thousands of books, and changing an old word to mean new things (but only under specific circumstances) is much more difficult for me than learning a new word. I Googled it, and for what it's worth, the APA recommends against the singular "they" because they also think it can be confusing (except in cases of gender diversity): https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2015/11/the-use-of-singular-they-in-apa-style.html https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2015/11/the-use-of-singul... The Chicago Style guide is much the same. I don't think either mean's to say that it automatically becomes less confusing when gender diversity is involved, it's just that we don't have better options. It's sci-fi. If we're imaging a better future, can't we also imagine some new pronouns that don't confuse people?
- stevenAthompson 3y ago
  Just for giggles I asked Bing It also thinks that sentence refers to Dex and another person. >Hello, this is Bing. I can help you with your question. The word “they’d” is a contraction of either “they had” or “they would”. In this sentence, it means “they had”. It refers to the subject of the previous clause, which is Dex and an implied other person. The sentence implies that Dex and someone else had done formal study before, but now Dex wants to self-teach.