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Robyn Terri Posted 19 years ago
Grammar

He/she/they/it/whatever ?!

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00I'm at work and have just received this email, I want to make sure I respond correctly, the form he is talking about will not be changed, we send out thousands of these via email a week, and I'm not sure using the word 'they' is incorrect when refering to one person we do not know the gender of.02p

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01span00Also he has made a mistake in his response to us, 'need' instead of needs.02span02p

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01span00Normally I wouldn't even bother responding, but it is the beginning of the day and before I file it away in my 'good for a laugh' file, I'd like to respond absolutly correctly.02span02p

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01span00"I did not fill in the referee form that you submitted to me because the pronoun changes from he/she to they their etc. in the plural. I am not writing about them but about one applicant, so it need to be written in the singular.02span02p

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01span00The plural case is not clear to me and you need to change this into the singular before I fill in the referee form."02span02p

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9 Answers
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0Can someone help me out here?02br
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00I thought we could use 'they' as a singular if it is a general sort of a term meaning someone else not us who we don't know the gender of ?0-
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0The jury is still out. You certainly hear "they" used to refer to a person when the gender isn't know, and it's more and more common in informal writing, but there are still peope who oppose its use for the singular in all writing, and many who oppose it in formal writing.02br
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00Options include he/she (not very elegant), alternating he in one paragraph and she in the ne
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0 Why not, just for laughs, print out the form, cross off all the theys in red ink, replace them with the singular forms, scan it in, and email him the "corrected" form.0-
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1font00I think it is quite rediculous not to fill out a form for this reason, this bloke would be a real pain to work with I imagine.02font02br
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01font00I'd like to respond defending our use of the word 'they' and correcting his use the the word 'need' instead of needs, but of course I want to make sure I do t
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01cite10Robyn Terri12cite11font10I think it is quite rediculous not to fill out a form for this reason, this bloke would be a real pain to work with I imagine.12font12br
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11font10I'd like to respond defending our use of the word 'they' and correcting h
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0 Here's something interesting I found on Wikipedia:01blockquote
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10It is commonly assumed that this usage is due to the singular third-person personal pronouns being either gender-specific (he/she, himself/herself, etc.) or inappropriate for referring to people, such as the forms of it. However, historically, the singular they arose when the num
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1font00Thank you so much Marvin, that is wonderful !02font02br
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0Robyn, I completely agree you don't want to work with someone who will get wrapped around the axle on something so trivial. 02br
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00I'm not a subjunctive expert, but I believe he was using it when he used "need," and it was not incorrect.0-
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0Imagine refusing to fill out a form because of this. Can you imagine having to work with this guy?02br
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00Reminds me of a time when I was younger and briefly worked inputting data for social security claims. We had a man making massive complaints as he couldn't get any money as his details simply didn't match up with any real person's information. Turns out the twerp had
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