Re: use of he/she/they

[John F Renish <John_F_Renish -at- NOTES -dot- SEAGATE -dot- COM>]

Scott Herron pointed us to a web site that discusses this issue. The article
suggests several clumsy rewrites of a rather straw example, none of which is
truly satisfactory because they are all wordy. Its heart is in the right place;
its head isn't.

Ron Jenkins wrote:

<snip>
A collection of useful methods for eliminating the generic "he" can be found in
_The Non-Sexist Word Finder_
</snip>

and followed it with several examples of recasting various quotations. The
truly disturbing thing about the examples is that they retain the attribution
to the original authors, as if the literal emasculation of the quotations had
been the authors' idea. Nobody should countenance this dishonest practice.

Geoff Hart says correctly that one can always write around the problem
elegantly without violating the rules of grammar, including avoiding the odious
singular "they". Hear him.

John_F_Renish -at- notes -dot- seagate -dot- com
My remarks do not represent any other person or entity
"A gentleman never unintentionally gives offense."
--John Paul Jones

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