On 6/1/07, Jeffrey Kaplan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Someone said: > > REALLY? To me > > "the person who" > > must be a he or a she; "it" does not make it nor does THEIR!!!! Clue: > > person is singular. > > Then please educate me on the proper genderless indication of singular > ownership in one word or less. >
What person do you know is without a gender? When talking about individual _people_ (at least in English; I don't want to generalize beyond my familiarity), one should always specify a gender. With that said, there are different approaches: 1) Use "his" when referring to a person not believed/assumed to be female 2) Alternate "his" and "her" (apparently to show some sensitivity to diversity) 3) Use "his/her" or "his or her" (although this has fallen out of fashion in favor of #1 above) If you follow one of those rules consistently, you leave little opportunity for well-founded criticism. With that said, using "their" when "his" should be used is pretty far down my personal list of grammatical grievances. :-) - Craig [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
