[projectaon] Re: Editor's Companion Submission
- From: Timothy Pederick <pederick@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: projectaon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2010 01:25:22 +0800
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.
--
Tim Pederick
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