On Monday 31 January 2005 10:06 am, Daniel Burrows wrote: > "they" is commonly used colloquially > (at least around here) as a gender-neutral substitute for "he" or "she".
And just to be ultra-clear, I don't mean "used by PC people", but rather "used in informal speech as the preferred alternative when you don't know the gender of the person to whom you are referring" -- much to the dismay of our high school English teachers, who tried their best to get us to use one of the formally correct alternatives. Daniel -- /------------------- Daniel Burrows <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ------------------\ | Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you | | tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the | | time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining. | \---------------- The Turtle Moves! -- http://www.lspace.org ---------------/
pgpNFoGqxcpPS.pgp
Description: PGP signature
