[ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes

[Mike Dougherty]

On 5/21/07, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:
> P.S.  Was anyone who read the above jolted at all by my
> insensitive male-chauvinist use of the generic "he" and "his"
> in the second paragraph?  No?  Well, would you have
> noticed if I had written "she" and "her"?   I conjecture that
> even those under age 30 still notice when the really more
> specific "she" and "her" are used, despite all the efforts of
> the politically correct over the last twenty-five years.

honestly, i usually filter those words out of the sentence.  I doubt
it has much to do with age as much as continuous use of electronic
communication - we compress text even as we consume it.  I think the
analog is similar to knowing what you meant rather than what you said.
 An effective writer constructs sentences using careful word choice,
but the words themselves are rarely the point of the sentence.