You might be interested in reading this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_in_English#Modern_Englis.... As third person singular personal pronouns, he and he/she are both acceptable in the dual gender case. If we're going to be strictly PC we should say gender-neutral, but A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language was written in 1985, so I hope you let it pass. :)
I've never understood the animosity towards overloading `they` as a neuter singular pronoun. It doesn't seem to introduce any sort of ambiguity in the language and replaces a whole slurry of fumbling and hackish attempts with a single widely understood syllable. It's damned convenient.
Of course, I also hold a disdain for "proper quoting".
> Of course, I also hold a disdain for "proper quoting".
What do you mean here? When talking about "proper quoting", I much prefer what I just did to what you're supposed to do (in American English) for "proper quoting."
I feel like when you quote things they become a unit together with the quotes, and the punctuation should then treat the whole composition as a single object. You wouldn't stick punctuation in the middle of the word at the end of a claus,e so why would you do that with quote?s
That's interesting, I don't think it makes one seem anymore uneducated than any other piece of correctly used grammar (correct use of the word "one", "none of them is" etc). I wouldn't regard my self as uneducated, having had the privelege to go to a good (if not public/private) school.
By any chance is this one of those quirks of American grammar usage that I've not come across before. The only times where I've seen disapproval of the use of 'they' in that fashion was on the Internet...
By any chance is this another Ame
I agree with the thrust of your comment that vernacular is what it is and attempts to police it are foolish. Though there's no need to be rude. And "he" is not a vernacular (Muphry's Law?). But this case is a lot more subtle than you imply.
Generic singular "he" is an older usage that is slowly phasing out as society changes. When I find myself using "he" for this, I always notice that it doesn't quite feel right anymore. Of course most people who favor this usage point to its "standard" correctness (cf. this thread), but that's pointing to the past. What's interesting is that we're in a pluralistic stage where there are many competing alternatives -- generic "he", alternating "he" and "she", "he or she", singular "they" -- none of which quite feels right.
This is untenable in the long run because it forces you to think about which one to use. That's way too much runtime overhead, and it's not how language works. Vernacular is a don't-make-me-think thing. That's the real problem with sprout's suggestion in the GP, i.e. rewording to drop the generic singular altogether. It's a viable alternative, and I do it all the time, but it's also the most expensive.
There's no way this gap won't get filled. The only reason we haven't seen it yet is that fundamental language shifts are slow relative to a human lifespan.
The option I find most annoying is the "sometimes use 'he' and sometimes use 'she'" one, which is like solving a design problem in a function by offloading it entirely to the caller. Not only do you have to think about which one to use, you also have to reference-count to keep the two in balance over time. No way is that one going to survive. (I also find that people who do this tend to be annoying tsk-tsk types, though maybe that's a prejudice.) My money's on singular "they", because it's the simplest, it's truly generic, and -- amusingly contrary to all the pseudo-grammarians who freak out about it -- it has a long history in English. Great examples at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they.
Standard English is a construct of a society predominantly run by, and for, men. It is, in no small way, the English of Those Who Rule, which is to say, at least for a very long time, men.
I don't disagree that standard language is dynamic and a representation of culture (and those who control it).
However -- while I have heard plenty of suggestions for resolving the issue from college english professors, none of them have managed to convince the Central Board of Oppressive English to accept their proposal, and so we might just be stuck with non gender-neutral pronouns and awkward she/he constructions for the time being.
'They' might emerge as a ambiguously plural/singular gender-neutral pronoun, but in the meantime I won't berate anyone for sticking to the accepted standard.
So? It means what it means; you can't argue that something is insulting because it would be insulting if someone else was directing the growth of the language.
The sex of an author who's article I'm reading has never crossed my mind. Who gives a crap if they're male/female? They're an author, they should be treated as such.
Okay, then another question: if after you read the title, someone asked you something about the author so that you had to "instantiate" the author in your head, which sex would you think of? Is it likely than anyone would think of a woman? Is it then true that we're hiding women behind a male pronoun? Surely it's impossible to picture a "prototypical human" without gender, no?
Don't get me wrong. I don't believe in the strict male/female binary or in universal identity, and I don't know if a woman inherently writes different from a man. But I do think that language's assumptions shape the way we think, and therefore the laws we make. That is enough for me to seek a more neutral and equitable way of speaking.
If your not considering the sex, race, or age of an author then you are not considering all aspects of the article especially when the article is an opinion piece. We already know that the sexes think different, maturity matters and the races have different perspectives so why ignore a pertinent bit of information?