I don't particularly like them, but I'm less opposed to creating a new pronoun than abusing an old one. Put it this way: if I were grading a paper and someone wrote "The mail carrier is on THEIR route", I'd take off points, whereas if he wrote "The mail carrier is on hir route", I wouldn't (unless I mistook it for a typo).Kuroneko wrote:How do you feel about artificial (but somewhat common) constructions like 'sie' or 'hir' (she or he, his or her, respectively)?RedImperator wrote:It's grammatically incorrect when it's used as a singular pronoun. Under no circumstances is "they" (or "them" or "their", for that matter) singular, and it drives me fucking batty when they're used as neuter singular pronouns. If you MUST be gender senitive, use "he or she", "him or her", and "his or hers". They're ugly kludges, but at least they work.
I like P.J. O'Rourke's approach best: "Why don't we just combine 'she' and 'it' and pronounce accordingly?"
