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Forum:The Singular "They": Difference between revisions
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*I have never said that Dark Firaga is a "male command." Just as we cannot assume it is male-exclusive, we cannot assume a female will someday have access to it. What upsets me about this Wiki time and again is we try to do things based on our personal preferences, rather than express what the GAMES state to be so. | *I have never said that Dark Firaga is a "male command." Just as we cannot assume it is male-exclusive, we cannot assume a female will someday have access to it. What upsets me about this Wiki time and again is we try to do things based on our personal preferences, rather than express what the GAMES state to be so. | ||
*Just because something sounds "awful" to you, that does not mean we can just ignore grammar or use that opinion as the basis for a policy. I acknowledge you simply threw your opinion out with this comment; while "his or her" can make things wordy or hard to read, it is just proper grammar and nothing more. Again, I ask what right you have to say, "Damn the prescriptivists. Let's improve the English language."}} | *Just because something sounds "awful" to you, that does not mean we can just ignore grammar or use that opinion as the basis for a policy. I acknowledge you simply threw your opinion out with this comment; while "his or her" can make things wordy or hard to read, it is just proper grammar and nothing more. Again, I ask what right you have to say, "Damn the prescriptivists. Let's improve the English language."}} | ||
{{KrytenKoro|My family was previously involved in actually working with teachers. I too have plenty of experience with teachers and teaching, and I feel confident in saying that teachers are imperfect creatures, same as anyone. Just because they say something is the truth doesn't make it so. This is triply true for textbooks, which are...sadly quite often packed with lies, unless you're dealing with something uncontroversial, like algebra. There are teachers who say that you ''must'' put two spaces after a period, and anything else is terrible and moronic, and there are teachers who say that you ''must'' only put one space -- and sometimes, neither can tell you the reasoning for either tradition, only that it is supposedly ironclad. The point is that talking about "what our teachers taught us" is irrelevant to the actual discussion here -- we need to have reasons for what we do, not dogma. | |||
That said, I'm okay with sticking to an agreed upon MoS, whether it is Chicago or OWL or even British or Australian. I'm not okay with using an MoS to bludgeon other users for making changes if we, as a community, agree those changes add clarity. Prescriptivists weren't elected by anybody, and have no vested authority to tell us how a language should be run; the fact that one of the rules we're discussing has been "broken" since before prescriptivists existed should tell us that perhaps they are less "telling us how English works" and more "telling us how they personally prefer English to work". We should use a prescriptivist-made MoS because it adds efficiency and structure, not because of dogmatic arguments that it is the "one true way". I'm not advocating complete anarchy, but I ''am'' saying that the wiki, ''as a structured community'', should be able to decide where to adhere and where to stray from one of the big-name MoS's rules. | |||
I'm not making accusations about what you did or didn't do -- I am exploring a hypothetical and giving my reasoning for my own choices regarding it. I think it would be reasonable to use a gender-specific pronoun ''if gender is relevant'', but not if it is coincidental. I raised Dark Firaga as an example. There is a world of difference between "we've only seen dudes do this" and "only dudes ''can'' do this". | |||
Finally, I think I made it quite explicit that I wasn't using my opinion on how "his or her" sounds as a basis for policy, or even suggesting that it should be used. You very much need to stop taking things personally, because you're being irrational with that statement. | |||
As far as "proper grammar" is concerned -- (1) you're begging the question, which is whether it ''is'' the only acceptable "proper grammar" (which, even if we only accept the dictates of prescriptivists, isn't demonstrated), and (2) our goal on this wiki is not "proper grammar", it is to communicate information to our reader. If proper grammar enhances that, then great, let's use it. If it becomes an obstacle, then it should no longer be viewed as a sacrament.}} | |||