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Re: Gender neutral - any new developments in your neck of the woods?
Subject:Re: Gender neutral - any new developments in your neck of the woods? From:Paul DuBois <paul -at- kitebird -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 28 Feb 2003 17:02:19 -0600
> Is anyone a fan of using "they" as the gender neutral singular pronoun
> of choice? For example:
No.
> "The first time a user accesses their account, they will have to enter
> their e-mail address and give praise to tech writers everywhere."
Ugh.
The reason I don't like this kind of thing is that it always brings
me up short and makes me think about it. I can't just *read* such
a sentence, I have to think about whether or not it's correct. That
seems antithetical to what you want as a writer.
Not that it's always easy to revise the sentence to avoid this problem
and the alternatives you list below.
>
> Not the best sentence ever inked (ethered?), but it illustrates my
> point. I guess my real question is whether or not the usage above has
> gained any momentum in the past year or so or is this still a sticky
> subject that has several solutions?
>
> I'm obviously never going to use:
> she/he
> he/she
> s/he
> he or she
> and so on and so on and so on
>
> Thanks, and have a great weekend!
> Dan Glovier
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