Age and gender confusion at the Olympics

[Mark Mandel]

ISTM that the Globe should have used the gymnast's full name both times, or
throughout the story, to avoid confusion.

m a m

On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 8:28 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

> Yes, Larry, for the first sentence I quoted, and for the prior
> context of the article, which does put one into the *women's*
> gymnastic team with several "she"s or "her"s.  But I was mentally
> delayed by the *second* sentence, where "He" is the first word -- and
> I did not immediately think of  or pronounce the name of God or the
> Chinese female gymnast, but rather the more frequent masculine pronoun.
>
> Joel
>
> At 8/15/2008 07:57 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
> >At 7:35 PM -0400 8/15/08, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> >>A Boston Globe story today on the "issue" of the age of some Chinese
> >>women gymnasts has the following in a mid-article paragraph:
> >>
> >>"If the age reported by Xinhua was correct, that would have meant He
> >>was too young to be on the Chinese team that beat the United States
> >>Wednesday and clinched China's first women's team Olympic gold in
> >>gymnastics.  He is also a favorite for gold in Monday's uneven bars
> final."
> >>
> >>The second sentence above fazed me for a few seconds -- I had to
> >>re-read and mentally re-pronounce it.
> >>
> >>Joel
> >Especially if you hear it out loud.  When you read it on the
> >page/screen, you realize it must be either about God (who can be any
> >age or gender) or some female Chinese gymnast named He.  But there is
> >a certain "Who's on First" flavor about it, I have to concede.
> >
> >LH
>

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