Re: USAGE: English Usage: "THEY"

B. Garcia scripsit:

> >   "I was reading Frankenstein the other day, and they
> > talk a lot about electricity in the introduction to
> > this version"
>
> If a student comes to the third floor without a pass, they must return
> to the campus service center so that they may obtain one.
These are fundamentally different examples, though, because in the
first version "they" is specific (the author of the introduction);
in the second, "they" is generic.

> I LIKE that "they" is becoming an epicene pronoun.
But we still don't have sentences like "John went to the store;
then they went to the office."  That has to be "he" (or if the
facts warrant it, "she").

--
John Cowan  jcowan@reutershealth.com  www.reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan
Assent may be registered by a signature, a handshake, or a click of a computer
mouse transmitted across the invisible ether of the Internet. Formality
is not a requisite; any sign, symbol or action, or even willful inaction,
as long as it is unequivocally referable to the promise, may create a contract.
       --Specht v. Netscape

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