Re: USAGE: English Usage: "THEY"

On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 21:03:04 -0400, John Cowan <jcowan@...> wrote:
>> >   "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.
Introductions being introductions, though, it's likely that the reader of
Frankenstein didn't bother to remember the author of the introduction, much
less their gender.

>> 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").
The gender of a John is likely to be known before one can make narrative
statements about them.  Online it can be somewhat different, and one can make
all sorts of statements about a specific named person using "they" when
gender isn't evident.  I believe "they" can also be used for, for example,
neuter animates like bots in chat rooms.

	*Muke!
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