h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The text above my Edited entries says



These are all the Edited Entries to which this Researcher has contributed. They obviously read the Writing Guidelines and submitted their Guide Entries...
First sentence=this researcher...singular
Second Sentence= they ...read and submitted their...plural.

It would make more sense to say " someone...read and submitted guide entries that were accepted.

I am not a THEY!!!!!!

Your own fault for being in goo.

And it's not mixed tense but mixed singular/plural. However, as this is automated they can't know the researcher's gender, so it is common to refer to a person as 'they'. I can't see why that is a problem.

Quoting from "Gramatically Correct: the Writers Essential Guide"
(writers digest 1997)
The solutions that are easiest to apply are also the ones le3ast likely to please. Putting down he/she or s/he or using they as a singular pronoun. the first two are jarring, the last is ungrammatical.All three seem like cop outs...A sentence such as the following looks outright sloppy if not ambiguous.: Response to the new program has been favorable. One customer, for example, said they doubled their productivity within gthe first month..

Sorry, but Writer's Digest is talking nonsense, I'm afraid. There is nothing ambiguous about that example sentence. There is nothing apart from the "customer" to which the "they" could refer.

someone said that classic goo was my favorite. but if I have to look at that sloppy sentence evertytime I look at what articles have made the EG I may as well change to alabaster .

anyway It didn't say the sentence was ambiguous, it said it was outright slopppy even if not ambiguous.

Well, fair enough, but I think it implied it by mentioning it, even if it said "not". It would be like a presidential candidate saying "Now, while Barack Obama may *not* be an axe-murderer..."

Sloppiness, though, is a matter of taste and opinion.

Ye3ah, and mit romney may not be a polygamous SOB.

I wonder what someone would think if a political writer wrote:
While Romney may have a difficult time finding 1441 delegates, they still expect the Republican nomination will be theirs.

How about this one: Galaxy babe said they were not the one who put the equinox on March 21st in the printed hootoo calendar.

consider Isaiah 52:13-15
"See, my servant will prosper; he will be highly exalted. Many were amazed when they saw him- beaten and bloody, so disfigured one would scarcely know that he was a person. And He will again startle many nations."

Not the same situation, though: the text in both those examples is used to refer to one specific person: it's not pro-forma text designed to refer to a multitude.

I am not a multitude.

We are

agreed.

score: 15, -bel