Comments on: Needed: New Singular Possessive Adjective Combining “his” and “her”

By: padiwagon

padiwagon — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:52:22 +0000

what wrong with saying his or her??? it sound fine! just say it quickly? me hate hearing their as singular possesive. i don’t talk fancy like you does but its wrong!

By: TokeBernbole

TokeBernbole — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 04:08:34 +0000

I think the very idea of being offended by the use of he rather than she is, in most context, sexism of it’s own. I think many writers will write based off their perspective. Unless the writer is purposely conveying a sexist point of view. Also who your demographic is for the book will effect the perspective. If your writing for female readers you might feel it better to lean toward her and she.
But if one does have a good reason to be politically correct, I would say does it even need he/she/their at all? Could it not just say, “A writer must revise work carefully.” Does it need to be possessive? If that’s not correct, then rearrange the whole thing. “Writers must carefully revise work.” “Writers must be careful when revising work.” “Writers must take care when doing revisal work.” When using a specific case, I think he, or she, should be used when and how it feels natural to the writer. In the example above the sexism came with the exclusion of a choice d) (her), in which b, c, and d are all correct answers.

By: byword

byword — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 11:16:23 +0000

‘A writer must …’ and ‘The writer must …’ fail the primary purpose of generalizing because of their specificity, in that the first confines the case to any single writer and the second to a specific writer. ‘Writers must …’ is superior not only in its true generalization but also in its avoidance of supposedly ‘non-sexist’ contortions in what follows. The problem raised by ‘hir’ and ‘hem’, which still survive in dialects and some modern languages with Germanic antecedents—and are not therefore contrived in the way that ’s/he’ is—is the lack of a cognate nominative for the pronoun.

By: dorababu

dorababu — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 07:52:38 +0000

Good

By: Maeve

Maeve — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 19:44:17 +0000

Mari,
I can’t either. But I must admit to taking the coward’s way out. I tend to change the subject to a plural when the problem presents. I gag at “his or her,” “he/she” and such expedients.