I went to Indiana public schools and wasn't taught any of those three things. I think that is all bogus about Indiana's public schools and I went to three elementary schools, one junior high, and three high schools - in southern Indiana. I've heard those claims before and it definitely doesn't fit with my experience at all.
Another irony is the number of posters who say they won't use "he or she" because they think it is "confusing" but propose saying "they" which they claim is not confusing because they believe it is both singular and plural at the same time.
Strange. I went to Catholic schools for 12 years, even the nuns, priests, or Christian Brothers didn't teach that.
So what you're saying is definitions change over time.
Of course they can. If not, we wouldn't have comedians. Then like would REALLY be miserable.
Have to come back to this.
It doesn't matter what you use, as long as the reader understands you.
So centuries ago people signed their parchment letters and wrote after their names, “Refer to me as they rather than he.”? I don’t think so.
You're too smart and too honest to be making this kind of argument. I have never claimed that it is standard English practice to use "they" in place of "he" or "she" when those pronouns would be appropriate. I have simply pointed out that there are cases when speaking or writing where it is useful to have a singular, non-gendered pronoun, and for the past few centuries of the English language, that pronoun has been "they."
My post is exactly how some want to use “they” these days, and it’s ridiculous. I won’t do it.
I'm not telling you to. And by drawing a line from "they has traditionally been used as a singular pronoun in certain situations" to "I am being forced to use the wrong pronouns when I don't want to," you are making the worst kind of slipper-slope argument, in that not only is it illogical, it requires you to deny a demonstrably factual antecedent, which actually undermines your argument.
I will not stand for the bastardation of English.
Chomski would probably argue we’ve been using transformational grammar for eons too. It’s only recently Desantis got his panties in a bunch about it. (j/k)
According to your CV on the UF website, you graduated from Wabash with your undergrad chem degree in '84. The AIDS pandemic was first introduced to the world in a medical journal in June of '81. Unless you graduated HS in '82 and only spent 2 years at Wabash before earning your degree, how did Jennings County schools teach you that AIDS was God's punishment to heathens?
Like Goat, I couldn’t care less what you choose to do. At the same time, no doubt you’re going to want to understand others if they happen to use this form, your friends, family, colleagues, whoever.
If you couldn't care less, you wouldn't bother to post to me.
I'll use the plural "they" as is appropriate, which is 99 percent of the time. If the gender of the person is unknown, I might use they and I might use he/she. However, he/she is what I most often use if I don't know the gender of the person, occasionally s/he.I couldn’t care less in the sense of wanting to control your actions or “winning an argument.” I do care about you as a good fellow human being. 😉If you couldn't care less, you wouldn't bother to post to me.
I have no problem referring to a trans man as he and a trans woman as she, but I won't be referring to any single known person as they.
We've beaten this dead horse enough.
Guess I'm on his ignore list. Can't seem to answer the question.
He does that when his BS is shown to be BS.
That's actually kind of preferrable to the other thing some posters do, which is double- and triple-down on their BS and then spam the thread with the same repeated BS over and over again.
You make a good point.
Would be better though if he didn't do it in the first place.
I told him about it and suggested he take it down. Still there last I looked, but he proved a grand point about funding being cut.
This is an example of why the internet and social media is ruining social discourse.
