Re: He/She/?

At 8:41 pm -0600 7/1/00, Tom Wier wrote:
[....]
>the official standard language (and never has been), I think we can be a
>little
>lenient on those who often and consistently use the so-called singular "they".
...especially as that usage has, apparently, been around for at least a
couple of centuries or so.  In fact, this side of the pond, this use of
"they", "them" & "their" is quite common in 'educated' speech; tho many
would still avoid it in writing.

>In other words, you can't say "sounding educated" is someone who makes a
>perfect score on an arbitrary list of grammatical usages (would splitting
>infinitives
>be on the list, a phenomenon which has *always* been normal English usage?).
Indeed, you can't.  Many people say "between you & I" because they think
(and, alas, too often their listeners also think) it sounds 'more educated'
than "between you & me".  And of course, "between me & you" is positively
'uneducated' (even tho grammatically correct  :)

Ray.

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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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