On Twitter, is it 'he or she' or 'they' or 'ip'?

[Anthea Fraser Gupta]

And why can't we get messages through???  
 
And this is SOOOOO old hat. All the world over 'everyone loves their mother' is the dominant choice. It's been sorted..... 30 years ago!
 
Anthea

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Anthea Fraser Gupta (Dr) 
School of English, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT <www.leeds.ac.uk/english/staff/afg> 
NB: Reply to a.f.gupta at leeds.ac.uk 
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________________________________

From: owner-lgpolicy-list at ccat.sas.upenn.edu on behalf of Ronald Kephart
Sent: Fri 06/03/2009 19:48
To: lgpolicy-list at ccat.sas.upenn.edu
Subject: Re: On Twitter, is it 'he or she' or 'they' or 'ip'?



On 3/6/09 12:16 PM, "Harold Schiffman" <hfsclpp at gmail.com> wrote:

> Consider the sentence "Everyone loves his mother." The word "his" may
> be seen as both sexist and inaccurate, but replacing it with "his or
> her" seems cumbersome, and "their" is grammatically incorrect.

"Their" is only "grammatically incorrect" if you accept the idea that our
"grammar" is what is dictated to us by anal-retentive nitwits who don't
understand how language actually works.

Yeah, I'm in a mood. And I have a blog to prove it, appropriately titled
"The Cranky Linguist."
http://crankylinguist.blogspot.com/

Ron