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Old 07-28-2012, 03:09 PM   #71
MichaelSullivan
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Join Date: Oct 2010
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady View Post
If you've got three people, any pronoun would be confusing anyway, wouldn't it? Seems like you'd pretty much have to use the names to convey who's who.
Yes I do use their names, but how do a refer to possession such as a body part of one of them as in:

Ban shook his head.

I don't like any of the alternatives:
Ban's head shook. (Which implies the movement was not under Ban's control)
Ban shook its head. (Makes him seem like a thing)
Ban shook their head. (Which is the wrong tense as their is plural)
Ban shook his/her head. (Seems awkward).
Ban shook hiser head. (Seems confusing - especially since I don't want to explain to the reader hiser is a combination of his and her.


It's easy to say:

Ban nodded.

But I'm having problems for how to denote Ban's disagreement without using a gender centric word.

Last edited by MichaelSullivan; 07-28-2012 at 03:14 PM.
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