my latest windmill to tilt at

[rone]

English already has perfectly useful gender-neutral pronouns: it, its. Use them. Do not use they, them for singular objects. Do not use the abhorrent, artificial 'hir', 'zie', 'blim', 'gur', or whatever. Yes, people can be called 'it'. Deal with it.

Comments

[kerri9494.livejournal.com]

"Everyone must do his own work" becomes "Everyone must do their own work." Purists may become apoplectic upon reading this, but the construction is almost universal in educated speech and increasingly common in writing.

For some arbitrary values of 'educated'.

For some years now, we have been seeing it in well-edited publications such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Then they're not well-edited publications. QED.

Moreover, the sense of everyone (read, "all people") is plural even though the word is technically similar.

This makes me want to die. There's a subtle but important difference between 'everyone' and 'all people', at least in my brane. In the same way that there's a less-subtle difference between 'many' and 'much'. I will never agree that it's all right to say, "Twelve items or less." Just because Stop & Shop prints it on a sign doesn't make it right.

What happens when, as pentomino (I think) said, 'literally' no longer means 'literally'?

You're making baby William Safire cry!

[therobbergirl.livejournal.com]

Then they're not well-edited publications. QED.

There should be a Godwin's law for QED usage on the net.

Not only are these standards for well-edited publications, but authors such as Jane Austen, Jonathan Swift, George Orwell, and a ton others do the same.

A survey of classics finds 75 different widely regarded authors use the they/their construction to no ill effect of their status as authors.

The summarized list is here. (http://www.languagehat.com/archives/000421.php)

Examples and discussion from Jane Austen's work are here. (http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/austheir.html)

I would regret that George Bernard Shaw isn't here to defend himself against your claim that to use the they/their construction is at least to be poorly edited, and perhaps even to use an arbitrary value of "educated", but I don't he would care much.

[kerri9494.livejournal.com]

I respect your opinion.

A survey of classics finds 75 different widely regarded authors use the they/their construction to no ill effect of their status as authors.

Sure. But I wouldn't hire 'em as editors.

I also consider George Bernard Shaw primarily a playwright...and rarely an editor.

Hey, no one's going to change my mind that written English has become a morass, lacking precision and elegance, precisely because writers of some renown have bastardized usage for their own purposes.

Next up, VERBING NOUNS!