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Hi everyone. Since this question is about the use of the English language (and thus would fall loosely and roughly under "linguistics") I thought I would post under the "Art, Music, History, and Linguistics" subsection.
It has always bugged me that when writing the English language and trying to use pronouns for a singular individual of whose gender is not immediately apparent, the use of the male pronoun (e.g. he, his, etc.) has been considered the default "neutral" pronoun, when in fact that is frankly disingenous.
Jeff Rosenthal -- a professor of statistics at U of T (and one of my profs, btw), had written an essay about this very topic, and his proposal for the singular "they". Here is a link to his essay:
http://probability.ca/jeff/writing/singularthey.html
I was wondering what your thoughts are on this topic.
It has always bugged me that when writing the English language and trying to use pronouns for a singular individual of whose gender is not immediately apparent, the use of the male pronoun (e.g. he, his, etc.) has been considered the default "neutral" pronoun, when in fact that is frankly disingenous.
Jeff Rosenthal -- a professor of statistics at U of T (and one of my profs, btw), had written an essay about this very topic, and his proposal for the singular "they". Here is a link to his essay:
http://probability.ca/jeff/writing/singularthey.html
I was wondering what your thoughts are on this topic.