[projectaon] Re: Editor's Companion Submission
- From: Jonathan Blake <jonathan.blake@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: projectaon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 09:30:34 -0800
On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 9:25 AM, Timothy Pederick <pederick@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 2010/1/30 David Davis <feline1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>>
>> Using "their" here is a fairly commonplace phrasing.
>> One way to rationalise it is that imagine the sentence with a person's
>> name instead:
>> you would write ".but you sense that John is trapped within. You can
>> almost hear their desperate cries for release."
>
> But by choosing "John" as your noun, you're implicitly favouring "someone".
> If instead we use "a dog", then "their" sounds silly, and "its" would be
> correct. :)
>
> And if we use both -- "you sense that John or a dog is trapped within" --
> we're back where we started; do you use "their" or "its" as the pronoun?
>
> I actually kind of think "its" works better... IMHO, YMMV, etc.
How about we chalk it up to being gender/ungendered neutral and leave
it as it is? :)
--
Jon
~~~~~~
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