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s/driver/documentation/s/driver/documentation/Posted Jul 6, 2010 11:09 UTC (Tue) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106)In reply to: s/driver/documentation/ by hummassa Parent article: A line in the sand for graphics drivers
In English the correct gender-neutral term is "he." Some people don't like this for various reasons and choose to substitute "she" as gender neutral, often in an attempt to combat a perception of male dominance or out of a sense of fairness. "They" is also often used as a neutral form but it is incorrect (ungrammatical) when used to refer to a singular entity.
Regardless of the reasons for the origin of the use, "he" and "him" are correct when the gender is unknown or ambiguous. Other forms, no matter how common, are not good English.
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English Posted Jul 6, 2010 11:43 UTC (Tue) by samth (subscriber, #1290) [Link] Regardless of the reasons for the origin of the use, "he" and "him" are correct when the gender is unknown or ambiguous. Other forms, no matter how common, are not good English.This is totally false. First, the use of singular "they" is long-standing and good English, used by "Addison, Austen, Chesterfield, Fielding, Ruskin, Scott, and Shakespeare", to quote the Chicago Manual of Style. Second, prescriptivism is wrong about language, as a general principle, and thus your second sentence is false regardless of the particular topic.
s/driver/documentation/ Posted Jul 6, 2010 11:49 UTC (Tue) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
>"They" is also often used as a neutral form but it is incorrect (ungrammatical) when used to refer to a singular entity.
Simply wrong. There is no reason to support this assertion; it's a modern invention with no reasoning behind it - simply an arbitrary decision by a handful of grammatical prescriptivists who choose to ignore the large corpus of historical English text, not to mention the overwhelming current usage.
Since we mostly hear it coming from Americans, I conjecture that it may originate in Strunk and White (a highly questionable but ubiquitous American grammar guide).
s/driver/documentation/ Posted Jul 6, 2010 13:24 UTC (Tue) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] Regardless of the reasons for the origin of the use, "he" and "him" are correct when the gender is unknown or ambiguous. Other forms, no matter how common, are not good English. Please take this over to the Language Log blog at http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll, where linguists, i.e., professionals who know a great deal about things like English grammar and usage, will quickly disabuse you of this notion.
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