NOTE: use Perl; is on undef hiatus. You can read content, but you can't post it. More info will be forthcoming forthcomingly.
All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report
Stories, comments, journals, and other submissions on use Perl; are Copyright 1998-2006, their respective owners.
But... (Score:1)
... what exactly is the proper and established gender-neutral singular pronoun in English?
(All of the style guides to which I write suggest switching back and forth between "he" and "she" and I'm fine with that to the extent that I have no desire to give offense. However, in a language that barely supports gender anywhere but specific singular pronouns and yet lacks a neuter case, it feels weird.)
Reply to This
Re:But... (Score:2)
"They".
At least, it was both proper and established long before the Latin-besotted prescriptive grammarians sunk their talons into English usage.
See Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] for a summary, and this site [crossmyt.com] for more detail than you could possibly desire.
Personally, I strive very hard either to cast my subjects in the plural, or to avoid the use of pronouns entirely. All the "approved" alternatives are ugly, cumbersome, or bot
Re:But... (Score:1)
I considered adding a link to the last time the subject came up, but I rolled and hoped you wouldn't read this comment. I didn't even use your name!
Re:But... (Score:2)
Echel^H^H^H^H^HDamian