Re: Gender neutrality and the multiple-personality third-person pronoun

[Peter Sturgeon <prsturgeon -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

Original context form the start of the thread was "Police hope the
person who fired the shot will turn themselves in to 
authorities." From a local news story.

Sandy's right--"they" is acceptable and grammatical, especially in this
context.

A couple courses of action for people who are bugged by this
construction: 

Avoid it in your own writing.
 
Calm down when it's in somebody else's writing.

I for instance like to begin the occasional sentence with the word
"Because..."

I've been told by so many people that it's wrong that I'm careful who
gets to read it. If it distracts my audience, then it's a mistake (even
if it's correct grammatically.)


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