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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:Alan Bucher <bucherino -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Mon, 3 Mar 2003 16:43:56 -0800 (PST)
Dan Glovier wrote:
>Is anyone a fan of using "they" as the gender neutral singular
>pronoun of choice?
Of course.
I agree with others that it's better to rewrite such sentences. But
not because this usage is incorrect; because you can usually find a
clearer way to say what you mean. For example, you should write "you
must enter your password" instead of "the user must enter their
password" because the former wording is more direct and clear.
However, you can't always rewrite, and when a third-person
gender-neutral pronoun is called for, using the "singular their" is
fine. It's perfectly acceptable English usage.
Writers who use 'she' in an attempt to "give women equal time"
believe that they are being clever and progressive, but are in
reality doing more harm than good to their writing. The obvious point
is that they're committing the same transgression that spurred the
rebellion against 'he' in the first place. It's a superficial and
glib response. It's a treatment, not a cure.
The other point is that--like it or not--seeing 'she' used in that
context is unfamiliar to most readers and causes a double-take. It
makes them stop and reread the sentence. They wonder if they missed
something that would make the author refer to the subject as 'she'.
They wonder why the last reference was 'he' but now this one's 'she'.
It's like the author's waving a red flag that says "I'm being
politically correct here!" And all that does is cause an interruption
in reading flow.
I know some people would say that that's the problem, and we need to
get people used to seeing 'she' used that way. But that still leaves
the basic gender-specific problem, and also adds a randomness to the
choice of words (hmmm, I think I'll use women in my examples today!).
On the other hand, the singular their is neutral, constant,
and--while perhaps not fully embraced by the hold-outs--is certainly
familiar to everyone.
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