That’s a habit, not an intent. You implied that there were some deeper intent behind using “he or she” over the shorter and more inclusive “they”. Of course people are allowed to write however they want to, and they’re free to ignore my suggestion. I’m wondering why people are so bent on pushing back against it - what is it about my remark that turned this whole thing into such an involved discussion?
Yes, of course, nothing wrong there. I’m asking what’s wrong with using “they” instead, given that there seems to be some pushback
Nice ditty.
Thank you :)
Regional dialect, fluidity of language, variety - even habit.
Those explain why it might be the first thing people reach to, but I wasn’t trying to demonise that. I was trying to offer an argument for the alternative that I consider both more convenient to write and read and more inclusive. Habits can be changed.
Oh, I do respectfully disagree with that, especially when you cite medieval English but reference an American language dictionary as your source.
Does the nature of the source invalidate the content and points it makes? English is still English, and I was looking for a source that wasn’t Wikipedia, but also was publically accessible. I could have just copied all of Wikipedia’s references, but most of them are books or journals that I don’t expect people to have access to and didn’t individually check. We could debate here what burden of proof is to be expected in an online debate, but I didn’t think the matter to be worth serious discussion.
The point is the same: there are plenty of historical examples of it being used. To be clear, this is a pre-emptive counterargument to a point I’ve occasionally seen made: That the singular they was a new invention and should be rejected on that ground. If past usage has no bearing on your current decision, that argument obviously holds no weight.
In the latter case, I contend that the increasing spread, particularly in the context of that spread, legitimises its use for that purpose. I fall in with the descriptivists: Rules should describe contemporary usage, not prescribe it.
Ultimately, I believe using “they” for gender neutrality is more inclusive for identities outside the binary. I consider the difference in usage trivial enough that the difference in respect justifies it.
And which intent would warrant using “he or she” rather than “they”?
Would be a shame if someone could just shut down neighbourhood charity like that, if this discouraged even having these libraries, if the free exchange of thoughts beyond the control of those who don’t want their supremacy challenged was hamstrung like that…
Fucking assholes. This is why can’t have nice things: Because someone will inevitably ruin it for others to compensate their own misery.
Then the original comment would read
hose hings are very poorly made and all he most imporan pars are made of cheap plasic ha an average person can lierally rip off wih his or her bare hands
True, but this isn’t prose or high literature. What reason do you suggest why “his or her” would be preferable to “their” in this context?
The prescriptivist “It’s grammatically incorrect” argument doesn’t hold much water when it has been used since middle English.
In a poem, I can see the thought:
“I tried to fit the cadence of this clause
Within the measure of this poem’s form
Which has in past and present be the norm
By which this poem, too, seeks to adhere.
This is my authorial choice’s cause
for my decision not to use a “their”.”
But if to find an alternate way to word
Your writing’s pronouns strikes you as absurd
I nonetheless opine that you still ought
To make the token effort to include
With “their” all people by the same respect
That you for yourself would from them expect.
Refusing this, I feel, would be quite rude.
When it’s built around lage aggregators, running which privately is rather hard, there’s a bias in favour of centralised, large operators thereof, which mitigates some of the advantages.
“their” is shorter than “his or her”
(Even if you don’t care about gender inclusiveness, they is just more convenient)
Use it anyway. Dilute the effect. Make it worthless by drowning the signal in noise.
In essence, fuck up their patterns until they can’t see it anymore.
If discourse and argument fail to quell the intolerant, a tolerant society must be willing to use censorship and even violence to defend itself. If we let them trample all over our values, tolerating them for the sake of being the “better person”, we’ll be the better corpse sooner rather than later and history will remember us “Look how nobly they did nothing!”
If our history is ever written, that is.
First Elsass-Lothringen, now Heckler & Koch… when are they going to stop taking our stuff?
(Yes, I know the actual history is more complex. I’m just memeing.)
Also, “High Gothic” being essentially bastardised Latin, which honestly fits with the theme of chasing a glorious past with only fragments of knowledge left about it. Ave Deus Machina!
When it’s done to bad people, sure. When done to him it obviously wasn’t a bad thing because it was rigged and unfair and all that, because obviously he couldn’t do any wrong.
(That’s a sarcastic rendering of what I believe to be his logic)
For being mean to him? He’s a kid throwing around words he heard but doesn’t understand. It means doing something bad to people, and that’s enough for him. More worrying is the second point - it might be enough for his cult too. I fear things are going to get ugly.
That’s the other option, of course: If your employees are happy, they don’t need to form a union to press complaints.
If you do not act you are not absolved of morality because you had a choice. You made a choice and your morals were tested.
You hold the opinion that deliberate inaction is an action in itself, that the worth of lives can be quantified and from that conclude that a failure to reduce a loss in life is tantamount to condemning those lives to death. That conclusion is valid under those premises, but the point of the dilemma is that not everybody agrees with those premises.
…what kind of cup? Does a Crema + double Espresso count as one or as three?
It would be Musical Roulette essentially
While I’m not sure the idea is practical, I would be curious to see it play out.
What starts as a few cases of women disappearing would become a pattern. Allegations of abduction would be leveled as pretense to seek, arrest and prosecute all that help them leave. Meanwhile, by the power of the Internet, it would be quickly found out where these women fled to. An underground counter-stalking network would emerge, seeking to steal back the women. Eventually, another civil war might break out, this time over women’s right to control their own fate.
History might not repeat, but it may well rhyme.