> The article equates non-practicing entities with trolls, which isn't really fair. Most universities, for example, are non-practicing entities
which pretty clearly is intended to mean that universities are not trolls.
Did you mean "you're distinguishing between them, but I don't"?
(I can't work out where you're expressing your honest opinion, where you're describing what you think is rayiner's opinion, and where you're being sarcastic.)
The singular "they" is as old as Chaucer and used by Shakespeare, Conrad, Austen, and EB White. The made-up word "ve" is, for what it's worth, an attempt to pick a usage fight that you won't win. :)
Join us in camp "gender-neutral singular 'they'". You have nothing to lose but your &c &c &c.
Singular they is one thing, specific-person they is another. I haven't actually checked, but I suspect that most-if-not-all of those historical instances are referring to a person in abstract, rather than a known person of unknown gender.
Regardless, I'm not necessarily expecting to win this usage fight, but for the amount of effort it costs me, I don't mind throwing in anyway.
No. Not so. You've already lost this fight. See the positive side: now you can use "they" instead of "ve" and not fight your autocorrect like I just had to.
Don't take my word for it. This is a whole section of the estimable Language Log blog:
> My claim has always been that you just can't get singular they with a proper name of a person as antecedent.
Which is precisely the situation where I'd be even more inclined than normal to use 've' over 'they'.
But on a meta-level... my prediction was actually somewhat irrelevant: "most-if-not-all of those historical instances are referring to a person in abstract, rather than a known person of unknown gender" would be true not because of historical author's choices of pronouns, but because of the things they were trying to say. It just isn't especially common to refer to a specific person when you don't know their gender. If historical authors did find themselves in that situation, I wouldn't be surprised to find them using singular 'they'.
And it's irrelevant beyond that, because even if historical authors turned out to do this all the time, it's not likely to change my own usage. I like gender-neutral pronouns, I think they fill a gap that 'they' doesn't, and I'm willing to take the hit (in occasional downvotes and in clarity to people not used to them) to use them.
(I've now spent way too much time on this relative to the amount I actually care...)
What you just said made no sense. You're saying that "precisely the situation where you'd be even more inclined than normal to use 've'" is the situation where you know the gender of the antecedent.
To the list of reasons not to torment your spellchecker, add that.
I lump usernames in with proper names. I guess if you don't lump them together, it's not precisely the situation. But I still feel like I can use that article as validation for not wanting to use 'they' in certain situations.
e.g. (if I didn't know your gender, like I don't know most genders on HN), I'd much prefer "tptacek said that ve likes bcrypt" over "tptacek said that they like bcrypt".
Huh? Ve said,
> The article equates non-practicing entities with trolls, which isn't really fair. Most universities, for example, are non-practicing entities
which pretty clearly is intended to mean that universities are not trolls.
Did you mean "you're distinguishing between them, but I don't"?
(I can't work out where you're expressing your honest opinion, where you're describing what you think is rayiner's opinion, and where you're being sarcastic.)