11.12.2006

Gender neutral third person singular pronoun update

NEW FROM THE FRONT:

The war over the appropriate way to refer gender neutrally to somebody in the third person singular wages on, but today I saw something that indicated a small victory for the Populists.

"John Smith added "Physicalism- or something near enough" to their favorite books."

Facebook's mini-feed has adopted the singular they to refer to persons who have not specified a sex on their profiles. Another point goes to everyday usage becoming mainstream despite the prescriptive grammarians and the Spivak faction.

1 comment:

Cristi said...

sorry to be a bit slow with this, but i wanted to link to an old post of scott's on the 'they' issue:
they're out there

it's bound to happen! facebook is just another (and even more codified) link in the chain...

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