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My English teacher back in highschool was very picky about using “they” like most people do. I can hear him say “you have to use FORMAL LANGUAGE” in my head still lol

If it’s an unknown person we were told to use “he or she” instead of “they” and “his or her” instead of “their” despite the fact that no one fucking talks that way when referring to an unknown individual.

Like even saying “everyone should bring their laptop to class” would be marked wrong because “everyone” is singular so the “correct” version is “everyone should bring his or her laptop to class” which imo is way more confusing

However, he was also fine with us using masculine singular pronouns when the gender of a person wasn’t known, which I guess is kind of the case in like Spanish and some other Latin languages but still, just really weird rules

[-] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago

so the “correct” version is “everyone should bring his or her laptop to class” which imo is way more confusing

Only if you're used to hearing it the wrong way.

'Emails'[sic] probably sounds more 'correct' to you, even though it's like 'deers' and 'happies'.

this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2026
24 points (87.5% liked)

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