her\ instead\ of\ they

her\ instead\ of\ they
A word to replace their and them and they in grammatically incorrect sentences. http://www.bartleby.com/64/5.html http://owlcroft.com/english/they.html

Dorkasaurus: Someone who is so intensely dorky, the word 'dork' alone will not do them justice. Them was used in the preceding sentence to be politically correct, but is not grammatically correct. Someone is singular and them is plural. A singular antecedent calls for a singular pronoun, so we have an error. Fifty years ago, him was the accepted English usage when a singular pronoun referred to a gender-neutral antecedent. In the first sentence of this paragraph, him would have been used instead of or them. However, him is now viewed as politically incorrect. What we need is a new accepted (correct for the prescriptivists, standard for the descriptivists) English usage. My modest proposal: use her instead of him for such a situation. Her maintains conventional English pronoun-antecedent agreement and, at the same time, avoids the political incorrectness of him. Thus, Dorkasaurus: Someone who is so intensely dorky, the word 'dork' alone will not do her justice. Nota bene: It is especially important that this new standard be used for negative examples. Some may object that the antecedent someone is gender-neutral, while the pronoun her is not. NOW, I maintain that her is still politically correct, a slight discrepancy in gender agreement notwithstanding. Using the masculine form has been avoided - that's the main objective of political correctness, is it not?


Dictionary of american slang with examples. .

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  • her\ instead\ of\ they — A word to replace their and them and they in grammatically incorrect sentences. http://www.bartleby.com/64/5.html http://owlcroft.com/english/they.html Dorkasaurus: Someone who is so intensely dorky, the word dork alone will not do them justice.… …   Dictionary of american slang

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  • Her Boss — is a short story by Willa Cather. It was first published in Smart Set in October 1919 [ Uncle Valentine and Other Stories: Willa Cather s Uncollected Short Fiction, 1915 29 , University of Nebraska Press; Dec 1973, page 139] .Plot summaryPaul… …   Wikipedia

  • they — [ ðeı ] pronoun *** They is used as the subject of a verb: They killed him. In formal English they can also be used after the verb to be, especially before a relative clause: It is they who are telling lies. 1. ) used for referring to a group of… …   Usage of the words and phrases in modern English

  • They Shoot Horses, Don't They? — For other uses, see They Shoot Horses, Don t They? Infobox Film name = They Shoot Horses, Don t They? image size = caption = Original poster director = Sydney Pollack producer = Robert Chartoff Irwin Winkler writer = Robert E. Thompson James Poe… …   Wikipedia

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  • they */*/*/ — UK [ðeɪ] / US pronoun Summary: They is used as the subject of a verb: They killed him. In formal English they can also be used after the verb to be , especially before a relative clause: It is they who are telling lies. Usage note: In spoken… …   English dictionary

  • They Do It with Mirrors — For the novel of the same name see Robert A. Heinleininfobox Book | name = They Do It with Mirrors title orig = translator = image caption = Dust jacket illustration of the US (true first) edition. See Publication history (below) for UK first… …   Wikipedia

  • they*/*/*/ — [ðeɪ] pronoun 1) used for referring to a group of people or things that have already been mentioned, or that are already known about I phoned her parents because I knew they were worried.[/ex] It s hard to choose. They re all very nice.[/ex] 2)… …   Dictionary for writing and speaking English

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