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I smell a holy war. Since the singular "they" *is* a usage preference and not a
tech-writing topic per se, I suggest we drop it and move on so Eric keeps on being
proud of us. :-)
Janice Gelb wrote:
> There's a difference between language mutating so that, say, a
> word that used to be hyphenated isn't hyphenated any more. But
> to have a word sometimes have one definition and sometimes another
> doesn't fit into that category of "progress." One can't just say
> *poof* and make a word sometimes plural and sometimes not plural,
> the latter when one wants to get around some problem that one could
> get around in another way if one just put some effort into it.
>
> There are numerous gramatically acceptable ways to word
> sentences to avoid gender-specific pronouns. Using "they"
> for a singular subject is not one of them.
>
--
Rebecca Stevenson
Technical Writer
Art Technology Group
Cambridge, MA
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