patel@ucla-cs.UUCP (01/18/85)
in case this hasn't been mentioned in this discussion so far, i
would like to strongly recommend
The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing
by Casey Miller and Kate Swift
Barnes and Noble Books
Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, N.Y. 10022
ISBN 0-06-463542-2 $3.95
they show why certain usages are inappropriate and suggest various
alternatives. regarding the current discussion on the singular
"their", i'll quote (without permission) from page 36,
Present-day linguists, tracing the history of the so-called
generic \fIhe\fP, have found that it was invented by the [early]
grammarians themselves in a attempt to change long-established
English usage. The object of the grammarians' intervention was
the widespread acceptance of \fIthey\fP as a singular pronoun,
as in Lord Chesterfield's remark (1759),
"If a person is born of a gloomy temper ... they cannot help
it."
Nearly three centuries earlier, England's first printer, William
Caxton, had written,
"Each of them should ... make themself ready."
and the invocation
"God send everyone their heart's desire"
is from Shakespeare. In such usages, grammarians argued,
\fIthey\fP lacked the important syntactic feature of agreement
in number with a singluar antecedent. But in prescribing\fIhe\fP
as the alternative, they dismissed as unimportant a lack of
agreement in gender with a feminine antecedent.
as for more current examples of the use of the singular "they", some
of the examples given are:
"Nobody prevents you, do they?" - William Thackeray
"... everyone shall delight us, and we them" - Walt Whitman
"It's enough to drive anyone out of their senses" - G.B. Shaw
"Everyone raised their voice in song"
"Anyone using the beach after 5pm does so at their own risk"
another quote:
Those who cannot bring themselves to use \fIthey\fP in place of
\fIhe\fP sometimes produce sentences like:
"Nevertheless, everyone, the fastidious queen included,
resigned himself sooner or later."
nuff sed.
'dorab