Oh, good! We're actually going to have this argument? Even though I said I don't care what you do?
On 22 September 2015 at 15:11, Andrew Dunstan <and...@dunslane.net> wrote: > On 09/22/2015 09:25 AM, Geoff Winkless wrote: > >> If someone sends me a document that uses "their" in a singular usage, I >> will think that person is lazy. That will continue to be the case, whether >> people tell me that it's accepted usage or not. > > > You can think that if you like, Thanks! That's a great relief to me, as I'm sure you can imagine. > but it's not even remotely true. You just stated that the reason you don't want to use the plural form I suggested is because it's too hard/time-consuming. That does suggest you accept that it's a valid solution but you're too lazy to use it. > It's a deliberate choice to use a new, perfectly reasonable and now widely > accepted style of which you disapprove, but it's not lazy. > That's your opinion; my opinion remains otherwise. It's not "perfectly reasonable" to abuse the plural because some 1960s feminazis either misunderstood or didn't like the fact that (because of history) in English the gender-neutral singular happens to also be the male singular. Happily for me, I can continue to write documents in a grammatically correct way, and no-one will read them and think I'm a grammar-nazi (or obstinate, or old-fashioned or whatever) because unless they're specifically looking for it no-one will notice that I'm avoiding the contentious usage altogether. On the other hand, there _will_ be a (perhaps significant) proportion of people who read your documents and think that you're incapable of writing a grammatically correct sentence. Geoff
