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Re: Gender neutrality and the multiple-personality third-person pronoun

Subject: Re: Gender neutrality and the multiple-personality third-person pronoun
From: Beth Agnew <beth -dot- agnew -at- senecac -dot- on -dot- ca>
To: TECHWR L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Sat, 07 Jan 2006 00:50:06 -0500

I'd have made shooter plural. We want all of those idiots to turn themselves in. Alternatively, "Police hope the shooter is identified and reported to authorities." Do we really care if that individual turns him/herself in, or someone else does it?

Let me append another media mis-statement to this thread. I recently heard a radio report relayed from one of the major US stations describing the new regulations for items allowed to be carried on passenger aircraft as including "screwdrivers fewer than seven inches long". Someone actually had to look that up, and then make the wrong choice between fewer/less than, because even the most illiterate person wouldn't say that.

Gene Kim-Eng wrote:

I would have written "himself." The likelihood that a woman would do anything as stupidly macho as firing a gun into the air to celebrate the new year are infinitesimal, as is the likelihood that even the most stridently politically-correct feminists would want to claim such a nitwit as their own.

--
Beth Agnew
Professor, Technical Communication
Seneca College of Applied Arts & Technology
Toronto, ON 416.491.5050 x3133
http://www.tinyurl.com/83u5u

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References:
Gender neutrality and the multiple-personality third-person pronoun: From: H. Christopher Christner
Re: Gender neutrality and the multiple-personality third-person pronoun: From: Gene Kim-Eng

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