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Subject:Re: Evolving language or laziness? From:Kent Newton <KentN -at- METRIX-INC -dot- COM> Date:Sat, 16 Mar 1996 11:45:00 PST
On Friday, March 15, 1996 3:18 PM, Janet wrote:
<snipped unidentified quote explaining that the writer thinks using
"them/they" and "or or she" distracting to the reader>
>As a female reader, I find it distracting to be referred to as "he". My
>self-image does not include "he" at all.
On occasion, I've seen articles that use "she" as the gender indefinite
pronoun. Other than the initial confusion, I didn't bother me at all to
read it. Of course, I'll admit that I am not barraged by the use every
day.
>But I continue to not understand why this seems to be so major for some
>people.
>It seems to me to be a rare occasion when rearranging the sentence into
some
>grammatically correct shape that does not include "he" takes longer than
a few
>seconds.
In most cases, the sentence can be rewritten to remove the offending "he"
without losing the sense or intent of the sentence. When that is
possible, I do so. There are times, however, when it just is not
possible to rewrite it to remove the pronoun.
Kent Newton
Senior Technical Writer
Metrix, Inc.
kentn -at- metrix-inc -dot- com
