In article <el40sk$aio$1@fata.cs.interbusiness.it>,
Lucio Crusca <lcml@pixel.it> wrote:
> Maybe I've made several mistakes in it, but I'd like to focus on a
> particular sentence. A friend of mine pointed me out that in the following
> sentence
>
> "If someone decides to waste her time to translate this stuff..."
>
> the word "her" is wrong or, at least, restricts the meaning to women. On the
> other hand I'm pretty sure that several articles on the net use "her" to
> refer indifferently to men and women in similar sentences.
The gender-neutral term is "their", as in "if someone decides to waste
their time..."
Historically, English used the masculine pronoun to refer to either
gender, as in "if someone decides to waste his time..." but, in the 70s
and 80s, as "women's rights" was gaining a large portion of the popular
mindset, some folks switched to "his or her", as in "if someone wants to
waste his or her time..." Then, some VERY progressive people got it
into their heads that it would somehow make things "even" if they used
"her" the way the language had classically used "his" to mean anyone of
indeterminent gender. On the one hand, it's sort of sweet; on the
other, some people use it as a slap in the face, a sort of
"neener-neener, how do *YOU* like it?" kind of thing which, IMO, is
highly inappropriate.
"Their is safest", with "his" not too terribly far behind, and "his or
her" more accurate, yet clumsy, and will probably be cut by any
professional editors.
--
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