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I'm convinced. Where can I mention that women are very welcome?I'm convinced. Where can I mention that women are very welcome?Posted Aug 29, 2009 17:13 UTC (Sat) by hypatiadotca (guest, #60478)In reply to: I'm convinced. Where can I mention that women are very welcome? by nix Parent article: FSF to host a mini-summit on Women in Free Software
That's why i suggested "per story" over "per usage" :) I've also seen them alternated, and yea, it's hella confusing.
I'm less flustered by the singlular "they". As paulj points out else-thread, this used to be a common English usage.
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I'm convinced. Where can I mention that women are very welcome? Posted Aug 29, 2009 21:57 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
It's not the singular they that's flustering: it's when people think they can turn all 'he's into 'they's. You can't do that: singular they works only when number is uncertain, and fails horribly when it is known to be 1. (e.g. you cannot make 'he was a world-record high-jumper' use singular they). In practice, this is not often important when desexing examples. I'm just being pedantic. Again.
I'm convinced. Where can I mention that women are very welcome? Posted Aug 29, 2009 22:31 UTC (Sat) by hypatiadotca (guest, #60478) [Link]
ah, gotcha :)
I'm convinced. Where can I mention that women are very welcome? Posted Aug 31, 2009 22:37 UTC (Mon) by njs (guest, #40338) [Link]
FWIW, using "they" to refer to a specific individual of indeterminate gender is perfectly acceptable in my dialect. For instance, I could totally say "Some biker nearly ran me over today -- they weren't even wearing a helmet!". Your example of "They were a world record high-jumper" is a bit odd, but only because that sentence sounds like it comes from a biographical article or something, and it'd be pretty unusual to write a biographical article without being aware of your subject's gender.
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