Alternating gender

Posted by ESC on September 25, 2003

In Reply to: Alternating gender posted by Word Camel on September 25, 2003

: : : : Reprising our discussion of nonsexist language, here's an interesting article about the evolution of the genderless "he" and the ancient roots (okay - not exactly ancient but Middle English) of singular "they".

: : : Thanks, WC, that's an interesting article. The genderless 'he - his' has never bothered me, but since it has become so un-PC, I greatly prefer the singular 'they - their' to the abominations 's/he - his/her'.

: : That was a good article. Thanks for posting it. I prefer to rewrite sentences to avoid the whole issue.

: In some of the baby books I have they alternate pronouns, some by chapter and some as they occure in the text. Then it occured to me that some poor proof reader was having to go through to check that the pronouns did, indeed alternate as they were supposed to. And then I wondered that would happen if they weren't equally distributed. What then? It all seems a bit crazed to me.

When my children (boy and girl/twins) were little, I bought "Once Upon a Potty" to help with that phase. The potty user was a little girl. I didn't realize until much later that there was a companion book with a little boy potty user. Years from now my son will be telling a shrink, "My mother potty-trained me with a girl book."

• Alternatives Word Camel 26/September/03