[ExI] Captchas

[Mike Dougherty]

2011/8/13 spike <spike66 at att.net>

>
>
> The similarity of affect and effect is a good example of a minor flaw in
> the English language, but there are bigger ones.  Do suggest your own
> favorites.  Mine is that English has the same word for you singular and you
> plural.  So egregious is that flaw that many, perhaps most, regional
> dialects provide a patch of sorts, one that is really needed.  How many can
> y’all think of?  I am confident youse will know them.  Ye be sharp
> wordsters.  You guys know language.  spike****
>
>
I would like a nongendered singular pronoun that isn't the awkward fumbling
"his or her"

"A gender-agnostic writer should have a word to express his or her idea
without focusing on either 'his' or 'her' gender."
(though I especially love self-referential sentences like the one above or
like this one)

Frequently we use "their" even though it is wrong.  The artificial "one"
would be even worse here; "...express one's own idea."  I'm not even sure
that doesn't change the meaning in some subtle ways.


My wife would add that "you guys" as the plural form of you is unacceptable
- only through loosening the definition of "guy" to become "person" does
this phrase not exclude (or reassign gender) of the women at the table when
a waitress asks, "How are you guys today?"   Or perhaps even more egregious
is the possession rule "add apostrophe S" to the already plural word 'guys'
to make a word that is homophonic with "guises" as in "Let me get you guys's
check"
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