Words: Jay or Nay Friday

[vivaldirules]

In: _______ (doesn't exist, apparently)

Out: 'he or she', 'she or he', 'he/she', 's/he', 'he' and 'she' used alternately, 'him/her', 'his/hers', 'it', 'one' or 'someone'

People used to write 'he' when they did not intend to specify gender and really meant 'he or she' either because the subject's gender wasn't known or wasn't important. That irritated many people, including me, and I've witnessed at least 35 years of intense but failed attempts to remove unintented references to gender from written and spoke English.

The most laughable attempts are using 'he' in the first paragraph, 'she' in the next, and continue alternating thereafter. To me, that's like writing a math paper and, not having a symbol for ± (either positive or negative), setting all the equations to +1 in the first secton and those in the next section equal to -1. Now continue alternating. Hey, maybe the reader will pick up on the intended meaning - not! Another bad attempt is using 'it'. Most of us don't like it when people (or even dogs) are refered to as genderless and inanimate.

Something better is certainly possible and a reasonable mozzling seems in order. Of course, it will need to be simple, sensible, and unoffensive to become accepted and appropriate possessive and objective forms will be needed, too. Using "The Google" (I asked Dick to do it for me; I don't exactly get all this mousing and typing and clicking thing - I never had to before as your President; well, except once when I looked up what a nucular weapon really looks like since we never did find any WMDs), I see that people have proposed using 'em', 'sie', 'zie', 'e', 'ey', and others. As weird as these strike me, it seems like something is needed.

So whaddaya think? Time to change the language and add a word or two to it (don't we all the time?) or continue to live in confusion and inexactitude (I used The Google for that one)?

[zelda_pinwheel]

perhaps you should pose this challenge in the mozzling thread.

[Taylor514ce]

I try to use "one" whenever possible and sensible. Otherwise, I use "he" as a synecdoche for "a person". Everyone knows what it means, and where it isn't clear, usually a single parenthetical will make it clear for the entire text.

[Patricia]

I agree that it is odd to use 'he' for non-gender specific statements. If you were to say of a person that he is pregnant then eyebrows would be raised, even (especially?) if the person was a woman.

A lot of people just use 'they' instead of 'he or she.'
E.g. 'A person should remember where their towel is.'

Recasting sentences in the third person plural is sometimes an option: 'People should remember where their towels are.'

I'm quite taken with Marge Piercy's solution (in her utopian/dystopian novel, Woman on the Edge of Time). She suggests a gender-neutral pronoun: per. e.g. 'A person should remember where per towel is.'

(Somebody will now remind me that a person should remember not to end sentences with a preposition. But this is imposing an anachronistic Latinate structure upon English, which is not a Romance language at all.)

[vivaldirules]

Originally Posted by Patricia

(Somebody will now remind me that a person should remember not to end sentences with a preposition. But this is imposing an anachronistic Latinate structure upon English, which is not a Romance language at all.)

You've made my day, Patricia! I've ignored that rule routinely for decades and never had a justification at hand except that I'm lazy. Next time, that will be the explanation I will hide under.

[Patricia]

See this for more information:
http://grammartips.homestead.com/prepositions1.html

This 'rule' only came in during the 18th century. I blame Dr Johnson for attempting to impose a Latinate structure upon English when he compiled the first dictionary. (However, I do admire his writing, and quite like his Latinisms. But there is a place for Ango-Saxon and Middle English forms too.)

In the UK it is noticeable that many legal terms are repeated in both Anglo-Saxon and Latinate versions, so as to avoid get-out clauses. Hence 'without let or hindrance' which is otherwise a mysterious duplication.

[Taylor514ce]

One should remember where is one's towel.

Churchill on Prepositions

[zelda_pinwheel]

i'm confused. i thought is was a verb ?

[Taylor514ce]

The original sentence is actually a fragment, and would ordinarily be "know where your towel is AT." English. Makes as much sense as love.

[zelda_pinwheel]

ha ok. thanks.

(and also : heh...)

[vivaldirules]

Originally Posted by Taylor514ce

One should remember where is one's towel.

I rest my case.

[vivaldirules]

While we're at it, can we address some other rules I ignore - avoiding split infinitives and dangling participles? Where's that Elements of Style? Must find. Burn.

[igorsk]

Probably a wrong thread but eh.

Some "common" rules that I don't like and tend to ignore:
1) Comma and period go inside the closing quote.
A silly rule invented to reduce paper tearing in times of movable type and typewriters. Makes totally no sense now.
2) Two spaces after a period.
Also a leftover from typewriter era which doesn't even work well with non-monospace fonts. Thankfully seems to be used less and less nowadays.
3) No space after ellipsis.
All punctuation gets a space, why not ellipsis?

I also tent do drop commas when doing subtitiles (even in Russian, where there are hard rules on where you put your commas) unless they're necessary for comprehension, since I think they add to the time needed to read a subtitle.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by igorsk

Probably a wrong thread but eh.

Some "common" rules that I don't like and tend to ignore:
1) Comma and period go inside the closing quote.
A silly rule invented to reduce paper tearing in times of movable type and typewriters. Makes totally no sense now.
2) Two spaces after a period.
Also a leftover from typewriter era which doesn't even work well with non-monospace fonts. Thankfully seems to be used less and less nowadays.
3) No space after ellipsis.
All punctuation gets a space, why not ellipsis?

I also tent do drop commas when doing subtitiles (even in Russian, where there are hard rules on where you put your commas) unless they're necessary for comprehension, since I think they add to the time needed to read a subtitle.

Just slightly irritating when an excellent letter is spoiled almost at the last by a whoops...
Glad I'm not the only sufferer of koos...

[akiburis]

(Somebody will now remind me that a person should remember not to end sentences with a preposition. But this is imposing an anachronistic Latinate structure upon English, which is not a Romance language at all.)

Actually, it's very unlikely that anyone would have reminded you of this. As a strict rule of usage, it was dead even before Fowler's day, I think, and he certainly didn't prescribe it. Nor has any intelligent prescriptivist since Fowler. But it survives, indeed thrives, as a cherished straw man in antiprescripivist polemic.