GEICO, the second-largest vehicle insurance underwriter in the US, has decided it will no longer cover Tesla Cybertrucks. The company is terminating current Cybertruck policies and says the truck “doesn’t meet our underwriting guidelines.”
GEICO, the second-largest vehicle insurance underwriter in the US, has decided it will no longer cover Tesla Cybertrucks. The company is terminating current Cybertruck policies and says the truck “doesn’t meet our underwriting guidelines.”
True, but this isn’t prose or high literature. What reason do you suggest why “his or her” would be preferable to “their” in this context?
The prescriptivist “It’s grammatically incorrect” argument doesn’t hold much water when it has been used since middle English.
In a poem, I can see the thought:
“I tried to fit the cadence of this clause
Within the measure of this poem’s form
Which has in past and present be the norm
By which this poem, too, seeks to adhere.
This is my authorial choice’s cause
for my decision not to use a “their”.” But if to find an alternate way to word
Your writing’s pronouns strikes you as absurd
I nonetheless opine that you still ought
To make the token effort to include
With “their” all people by the same respect
That you for yourself would from them expect.
Refusing this, I feel, would be quite rude.
Comments here are a short form of writing, therefore people are allowed to phrase things and say things however they would like to. You won’t know someone’s intent before reading, so the way they write makes a difference.
And which intent would warrant using “he or she” rather than “they”?
They felt like it? Their brain worded the thought using “his or her”?
Yes, of course, nothing wrong there. I’m asking what’s wrong with using “they” instead, given that there seems to be some pushback
Thats how they speak.
That’s a habit, not an intent. You implied that there were some deeper intent behind using “he or she” over the shorter and more inclusive “they”. Of course people are allowed to write however they want to, and they’re free to ignore my suggestion. I’m wondering why people are so bent on pushing back against it - what is it about my remark that turned this whole thing into such an involved discussion?
You don’t think a display of someones habits counts as their form of expression?
Edit to add: Noone is up in arms about this, its a calm discussion from my point of view. Maybe you are confused there is even an alternate perspective though?
Maybe your T key is broken?
Then the original comment would read
That sounds more like someone that would deffend the cyber truck I suppose.
Nice ditty.
Regional dialect, fluidity of language, variety - even habit.
Oh, I do respectfully disagree with that, especially when you cite medieval English but reference an American language dictionary as your source.
I could just as viably give “his or hers” as equally valid as “theirs”, because it is. We’re not newspaper headline writers, nobody penalises us if we use a few more characters for any reason. And you could switch back and forth between them both for variety.
Thank you :)
Those explain why it might be the first thing people reach to, but I wasn’t trying to demonise that. I was trying to offer an argument for the alternative that I consider both more convenient to write and read and more inclusive. Habits can be changed.
Does the nature of the source invalidate the content and points it makes? English is still English, and I was looking for a source that wasn’t Wikipedia, but also was publically accessible. I could have just copied all of Wikipedia’s references, but most of them are books or journals that I don’t expect people to have access to and didn’t individually check. We could debate here what burden of proof is to be expected in an online debate, but I didn’t think the matter to be worth serious discussion.
The point is the same: there are plenty of historical examples of it being used. To be clear, this is a pre-emptive counterargument to a point I’ve occasionally seen made: That the singular they was a new invention and should be rejected on that ground. If past usage has no bearing on your current decision, that argument obviously holds no weight.
In the latter case, I contend that the increasing spread, particularly in the context of that spread, legitimises its use for that purpose. I fall in with the descriptivists: Rules should describe contemporary usage, not prescribe it.
Ultimately, I believe using “they” for gender neutrality is more inclusive for identities outside the binary. I consider the difference in usage trivial enough that the difference in respect justifies it.