Timeline for Use of "she" for a general person in a scientifical paper
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
14 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Apr 29, 2019 at 6:28 | vote | accept | JKHA | ||
| Apr 25, 2019 at 19:52 | history | edited | jonathanjo | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 79 characters in body
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| Apr 25, 2019 at 19:34 | comment | added | jonathanjo | @JasonBassford I've reordered the paragraphs and marked my opinions as such: does that read better? As well as trying to have neutral discussion, I'm trying to answer the explicit question of the original poster if he/she should do the same. | |
| Apr 25, 2019 at 19:32 | history | edited | jonathanjo | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
reordered and flagged my opinions as opinions
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| Apr 25, 2019 at 19:27 | comment | added | Jason Bassford | Both your third-last and final paragraphs are out of place. They interrupt an otherwise unbiased discussion with personal opinion. | |
| Apr 24, 2019 at 16:29 | history | edited | jonathanjo | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 700 characters in body
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| Apr 24, 2019 at 15:39 | comment | added | jonathanjo | My answer was intended to give a neutral point of view of different approaches to the question, with some indication of who finds each approach undesirable. Personally, I use singular they a lot too, but I wouldn't write it in a scientific journal, where I would tend towards we in a humanities and plural they in sciences. My suggestion about using she/he is because it's easy to do perfectly for non-native speakers. | |
| Apr 24, 2019 at 15:35 | comment | added | James Random | Singular they predates singular you, and no one complains about the latter. | |
| Apr 24, 2019 at 15:35 | comment | added | jonathanjo | The original poster found "she" confusing enough to ask here, and certainly other non-native speakers have asked me about it. I completely agree it's not confusing once you understand the idiom. Re "standard usages": feminists are enraged by "he", classicists are enraged by "she", and traditionalists are enraged by "they" (certainly not common, never mind standard, before the 1980s). Butt & Benjamin A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish changed away from translating fuma occasional as "she smokes" to "(s)he smokes" in its 4th ed because "some readers found it very confusing". | |
| Apr 24, 2019 at 15:20 | comment | added | James Random | I agree that alternating she and he would be confusing (especially if more then one person is being referred to). But I can't see why anyone would find consistent use of either she or they as a singular pronoun confusing. These are both standard usages with long standing. I assume the deliberate choice of she is to subvert the expectation (in many people) that a "decision maker" will be male. After the initial "shock" there should be no confusion. Personally, I would always use the standard singular they. | |
| Apr 24, 2019 at 14:58 | history | edited | jonathanjo | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 45 characters in body
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| Apr 24, 2019 at 14:21 | history | edited | jonathanjo | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
answered "should I"
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| Apr 24, 2019 at 14:06 | history | edited | jonathanjo | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
answerd "should I"
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| Apr 24, 2019 at 13:59 | history | answered | jonathanjo | CC BY-SA 4.0 |