Re: Evolving language or laziness?

Subject: Re: Evolving language or laziness?
From: Kent Newton <KentN -at- METRIX-INC -dot- COM>
Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 11:45:00 PST

On Friday, March 15, 1996 3:18 PM, Janet wrote:
<snipped unidentified quote explaining that the writer thinks using
"them/they" and "or or she" distracting to the reader>
>As a female reader, I find it distracting to be referred to as "he". My
>self-image does not include "he" at all.

On occasion, I've seen articles that use "she" as the gender indefinite
pronoun. Other than the initial confusion, I didn't bother me at all to
read it. Of course, I'll admit that I am not barraged by the use every
day.

>But I continue to not understand why this seems to be so major for some
>people.
>It seems to me to be a rare occasion when rearranging the sentence into
some
>grammatically correct shape that does not include "he" takes longer than
a few
>seconds.

In most cases, the sentence can be rewritten to remove the offending "he"
without losing the sense or intent of the sentence. When that is
possible, I do so. There are times, however, when it just is not
possible to rewrite it to remove the pronoun.


Kent Newton
Senior Technical Writer
Metrix, Inc.
kentn -at- metrix-inc -dot- com


Previous by Author: Re: Interest and Learning (was no subject)
Next by Author: Re: Framemaker required
Previous by Thread: Re: Evolving language or laziness?
Next by Thread: Re[2]: Evolving language or laziness?


What this post helpful? Share it with friends and colleagues:


Sponsored Ads