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This is sort of related to the "man-month v.
work-month" thread, but not directly.
My own company has been making every effort to be as
inclusive, gender-wise, as possible with our end-user
documentation. Until recently, when referring to an
unnamed person like the production manager, general
manager, etc, we have used the "he or she will . . . "
construction when using pronouns. Once it was decided
that this construction is a bit clunky, our guidelines
were arbitrarily changed to mandate use of "they /
their," even when referring to only one person.
This *really* bothers the linguistic purist in me, but
my real problem is that when I complained about it, I
could not come up with an acceptable counteroffer.
Does anyone have any suggestions for a
non-gender-specific pronoun set that *also* delineates
between plural and singular?
TIA
Spencer Fleury
Trader Publishing Company
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Remember: "Y'all" is singular. "All y'all" is plural. "All
y'all's" is plural possessive.
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