The English language has been missing a gender-non-specific third person singular pronoun for a long time. That is, "A toilet user must sink his/her own submarines". Various attempts have been made - his/her is probably the most correct but also the most clumsy. I've been a fan of their for a while, and while it's not technically correct (it's plural) there are certain usages that sound a lot better than others.
Facebook doesn't seem to realise this. Never a great one for impressive displays of grammar, one of their ugliest uses in this:
"Joe Bloggs updated their profile"
I think "their" only really works in the singular if the identity is unknown. For instance:
"A user has updated their profile"
sounds OK to me. Because the user could be anyone, we then have a vague sense of plurality. But the original just sounds hideous.
No comments:
Post a Comment