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Re: Use Of Punctuation In A Post And What Is Annoying or Confusing
Quote:
Originally Posted by Taylor
For me, the biggest 'turn-off' in using "they" as a gender-neutral term is that "they" is plural. Example (emphasis mine):
If a person wants to use their car to advertise that they graduated from an institution, then they would want to announce that they are one graduate.
The change from singular to plural, then back to singular, is troubling to me as a literalist. From my experience, engineers are nothing if not literal.
I'd prefer "one" or "his or her" to "they;" even though "his or her" is a bit more cumbersome, it is more proper (if only in my eyes).
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Point taken - However, on this one I do have allies as far back the 1300s according to this source: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/they
I am reminded of the apocryphal "... up with which I will not put!" tale described here: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/langu...es/001715.html
Blake
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Blake Ross, For emailing me, in the verizon.net domain, I am blake
VRC Team Mentor, FTC volunteer, 5th Gear Developer, Husband, Father, Triangle Fraternity Alumnus (ky 76), U Ky BSEE, Tau Beta Pi, Eta Kappa Nu, Kentucky Colonel
Words/phrases  I avoid: basis, mitigate, leveraging, transitioning, impact (instead of affect/effect), facilitate, programmatic, problematic, issue (instead of problem), latency (instead of delay), dependency (instead of prerequisite), connectivity, usage & utilize (instead of use), downed, functionality, functional, power on, descore, alumni (instead of alumnus/alumna), the enterprise, methodology, nomenclature, form factor (instead of size or shape), competency, modality, provided(with), provision(ing), irregardless/irrespective, signage, colorized, pulsating, ideate
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