[aaronbrethorst]

    Wasn’t that easy?

No, because there are a reasonably large number of people, especially in Starbucks' home town, who want to be referred to as ze, zer, or one of a number of other gender-neutral, recently-minted pronouns. http://www.warren-wilson.edu/~writingcenter/Gender-Neutral_L...

So now you either need to ask a user for their name and preferred pronoun, or just refer to them as "they".

[garg]

Here are some more sources -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they#Gender-neutral_la...

and

http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Singula...

Using the singular-they seems to be completely acceptable and preferable to the alternatives provided by the author.

[kyllo]

Did you read the article? The point he made was, if you don't know which gendered pronoun to use, just use their name!

"In a case like the generic email I got from Starbucks where the gender of the purchaser is likely unknown, the solution is even easier. Try this little programmatic trick:

    [$first_name] [$last_name] wanted to make your day so [$first_name] sent you a $20.00 USD Starbucks Card eGift to spend on your favorite beverage."

Or "this person" would work in many situations as well.

Also, what is "especially in Starbucks' home town" supposed to mean?

[FireBeyond]

Bleh. I think his "correction" is as 'horrific a travesty against language' as the original:

"John Smith wanted to make your day so John sent you a gift card."

That is not even remotely elegant.

[parennoob]

^ This. Using a noun instead of a pronoun just because you didn't know what pronoun to use defeats the entire purpose of a pronoun and makes a ghastly sentence which would have been thrown out of my grammar class back in high school.

Honestly, I'm surprised that:

a) He's writing this opinionated a post just to provide a solution which is that horrible.

b) He teaches English at UMCP. Pronouns in language are a difficult problem to solve at the best of times, and someone who proposes this sort of a 'bulletproof' solution of "Well, just Replace It with a Noun when you're confused!" worries me as an English professor.

[bashinator]

A little creative writing can easily fix this. "John Smith wanted to make your day, so now you have this gift card." "John Smith sent you this gift card to make your day." "You got this gift card, because John Smith wanted to make your day."

It's not rocket surgery.

[jaibot]

Seattle is home to a pretty progressive culture, and is much more amenable to pronouns outside of the traditional gendered binary breakdown.

[aaronbrethorst]

> Also, what is "especially in Starbucks' home town" supposed to mean?

Seattle has a relatively large genderqueer population.

[lubujackson]

So the solution is to never use pronouns?