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Interesting point. I'm not sure I agree with the connotation of sexism that it promotes. I would feel a gender neutral pronoun such as they/them/their would be
by balabaster 12y ago
Interesting point. I'm not sure I agree with the connotation of sexism that it promotes. I would feel a gender neutral pronoun such as they/them/their would be more appropriate, regardless of grammatical correctness.
- Havvy 12y agoGrammatical correctness is a fluid thing. "they/them/their" used singularily is one of those things that is on the edge of being accepted. Thing is, schools are slow to react and will keep saying it's wrong using a rigid form of thinking about grammatical correctness.
- mcphage 12y ago> "they/them/their" used singularily is one of those things that is on the edge of being accepted. On the edge of being accepted? It's been part of standard English for over 500 years!
- R_Edward 12y agoIt may or may not have been in customary informal usage for that long [citation needed], but it is still considered incorrect in strict, rigorous, formal usage. (Yes, this is on the cusp of changing, but for now, it's still true.) In formal usage, pronouns agree in gender and in number with their antecedents.
- mcphage 12y agoYou can easily find citations in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they from Chaucer, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, George Bernard Shaw, and so on. It's not "customary informal usage", it's just a regular, ordinary feature of the English language.