undefined | Better HN

0 pointsDaho0n5y ago0 comments

S/he already did. We just don't know yet.

0 comments

9 comments · 2 top-level

fckthisguy5y ago· 7 in thread

You can just say "they".

(Not trying to be judgy. People just seem to forget about the gender neutral use of "they".)

I'm not a native speaker but the problem I have with it is that it has the wrong numerus. Although I have done so in papers recently, because it seems to be a trend, sentences like "If a person chose option B, they were categorized as a cautious assessor" seem ungrammatical to me. (In this case it's easy to reformulate the sentence in plural and simpler, but that's not always the case and I hope you get the point.)

frosted-flakes5y ago

If the person is hypothetical or not fleshed-out and without a gender, like your example, they is fine and I don't even notice. But if the person is known, the use of they catches me off guard every time. I recently read a book by Brandon Sanderson that had aliens on another planet with a different gender system, so Sanderson just used they to refer to those aliens even though the characters were obviously either feminine or masculine. It completely broke the illusion of the story and was a complete turn-off. I always notice in such cases, but for some reason some people say it's totally standard English.

1 more reply

e12e5y ago

> > the problem I have with it is that it has the wrong numerus.

Not really: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/singular-nonbi...

unanswered5y ago

Why is it acceptable to use the wrong pronoun, such as "they", for someone who chooses the pronoun "she" or "he"?

randomchars5y ago

> used to refer to a person of unspecified gender.

How is this offensive to anyone??

1 more reply

detaro5y ago

They are not talking about a specific person, so how is "they" wrong?

buzzerbetrayed5y ago

There are like 500 other ways you could have said what you just said as well. Doesn’t mean the way you said it is invalid.

extropy5y ago

She both did and did not until we observe :p.

And even that is not correct. Events happening propagate with speed of light - the event horizon. We can predict we will receive information of something happening, bit that's just prediction about future events, regardless of the location.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments