Pet peeve

[sioneva]

Something I see popping up ALL over the place...

Folks, you do NOT need to make up a gender-neutral pronoun in English. By this I mean "hir," "zie," and company.

You see, to quote Monty Python, we've already GOT one. It's called the singular they and is entirely grammatically correct. I know, I know, it sounds wrong to say, "I don't know

Comments

[quen_elf]

can I just say '+1' in here or would that also fit the annoyances category? :)

I have to say on the other side, though, the use of 'he' as a supposed gender-neutral hypothetical pronoun does annoy me. (People claim it historically was used, which is true, but I don't believe it was ever really gender-neutral; books about cooking and cleaning aimed at housewives didn't use it.)

[sioneva]

I agree - I don't like "he" either.

[targaff]

You're just bitter that they don't have a separate category for "elf".

[daisho]

:)

[daisho]

It's still not settled that a singular they is always an acceptable substitute. As Bartleby points out, 82 per cent of the Usage Panellists at the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language reject it as an acceptable substitute for "his or her" when not referring to syntactically plural groups like "everybody". And amusingly, the same article points out that there's historical precedent for "hir" in English.

[sioneva]

And zie? Thon?

I'd rather choose an option that's reasonably widely used in literature than a made-up pronoun, even one with vague historical ties.

Anyway, I doubt most of the people using "hir" and "zie" choose them because they have a grammatical precedent, but rather because said people don't want to use "he" and think that "they + singular" is an incorrect form.

My opinion entirely and we can agree to disagree, if you like ;)

[daisho]

My personal preference is either for rephrasing to avoid the problem, or where that's impossible, to alternate between male and female pronouns either by chapter or paragraph. But in any event, zie and thon are, to my knowledge, completely artificial and therefore entirely dispensable; on that we can certainly agree. :)

[targaff]

Usage panellists are about as down with reality as a pothead after all-nighter on a hookah; part of why I mentioned them in my recent post was to highlight the fact that they couldn't reach a consensus if there was only one option on the table. At the end of the day most of those who argue about they's acceptability are people who are only willing to consider its usage in isolation in the misguided belief that a sentence must, in and of itself, be explicit, or those who've been taught to think that way by the self-same people. Those people are, how do I put this... wrong. The fact that they've more recently managed to recruit the PC brigade to their cause only goes to reiterate the fact.

[pondhopper]

Amen. Your pet peeve is one of mine. I HATE invented pronouns. "They" is perfectly correct!

As for ellipses...

;)

[sioneva]

I use ellipses FAR too much.

They're just so helpful...

[idemandjustice]

I like them too...

[dharawal]

*grin*

I have the same opinion, I have quite a few friends who are pre-op post-op, undecided or just plain gender fucked up, and I am not going to start throwing hir and zie around when they is quite good enough.

Oh and as for ellipses overuse... I point you here.

http://dcpes.com/?p=94

[neurotic_orchid]

Ooooh I hate the singular they. Those other neutral pronouns are annoying, too, but I hate the singular they more!