[dead]
Re:Richard Stallman Has Announced the GNU Kind Communication...
by lovich on Wednesday October 24, 2018 @02:35PM
(#18295124)
Is there any set of evidence that could exist that would cause you to change your view, or have you decided this based on emotions?
Re:Richard Stallman Has Announced the GNU Kind Communication...
by saosebastiao on Wednesday October 24, 2018 @02:32PM
(#18295098)
Singular they was in common use long before Left or Right has been to describe political factions. It is the right wing that politicized it, not the left.
> Former Chief Editor of the OED Robert Burchfield, in The New Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1996), dismisses objections to singular they as unsupported by the historical record. Burchfield observes that the construction is ‘passing unnoticed’ by speakers of standard English as well as by copy editors, and he concludes that this trend is ‘irreversible’. People who want to be inclusive, or respectful of other people’s preferences, use singular they. And people who don’t want to be inclusive, or who don’t respect other people’s pronoun choices, use singular they as well. Even people who object to singular they as a grammatical error use it themselves when they’re not looking, a sure sign that anyone who objects to singular they is, if not a fool or an idiot, at least hopelessly out of date.
Just for the record, it's not me calling you a fool or an idiot or hopelessly out of date, it's the former Chief Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary. The only debate here is the politically charged one with fake grammar authority that you have made up in your head.