Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site decwrl.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!hplabs!hpda!fortune!amdcad!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-amber!chabot From: chabot@amber.DEC (l s chabot) Newsgroups: net.women,net.nlang Subject: Re: 'they' as third person singular indefinate sex pronoun Message-ID: <207@decwrl.UUCP> Date: Mon, 14-Jan-85 13:44:07 EST Article-I.D.: decwrl.207 Posted: Mon Jan 14 13:44:07 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 18-Jan-85 01:24:54 EST Sender: daemon@decwrl.UUCP Organization: DEC Engineering Network Lines: 27 Xref: watmath net.women:4117 net.nlang:2421 Jeff Sonntag == > > I've been following the discussion here about the use of 'they' instead of > 'he' as a third person singular indefinate sex pronoun, and as I was writing > an article recently, I needed just such a pronoun. I thought: "What the heck, > let's try out this 'they' word."; and did. The results were less than > satisfying. This is the phrase I ended up with: > "is anonymous; if they finds out where I live, will > they come bomb my house?" > Now it may be that I've used this word inappropriately somehow, (though it > seems to be right to me) but if not, then I guess I'll have to agree with the > people who said that it looks and sounds very clumsy. It *does* often sound clumsy to have number conflict between the subject and the verb ("...if they finds out"). It is suggested that you rephrase your sentence to be " is anonymous; if they find out where I live, will they come bomb my house?" Now evaluate it for clumsiness. And in answer to the question, I think they'll do that only if their userid is "anarchist" rather than "anonymous". :-) L S Chabot UUCP: ...decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-amber!chabot ARPA: ...chabot%amber.DEC@decwrl.ARPA