On 6/6/2010 11:15 AM, Bob Friesenhahn wrote: > Regardless of Gary's affirmation, I don't think that replacing 'he' with > 'you' is suitable. 'He' and 'you' are not at all equivalent terms. If > there are two people in a room and one of them is 'you' then the other > one may be 'he' or 'she' but is definitely not 'you'. If one is talking > about the past, then the gentle reader might still have been in > elementary school at the time (or the womb) and so it is not suitable to > use the term 'you'.
Welcome to the wonderful world of political correctness. I was taught, and English grammars still concur, that in English -- even that version spoken on the western side of the pond -- the neuter gender is represented by the masculine. But that's not acceptable to the arbiters of PC, so we're left with circumlocutions like using "one" as a pronoun (which forces one to use the passive tense), he/she, his/hers, him/her, and new spellings like "womyn" and "herstory" ... or inappropriate and excessive use of the second person instead of the third. Gah. -- Chuck
