Date: Sat, 17 Feb 1996 11:12:05 PST

From: tom creswell creswell[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CROWN.NET

Subject: Re: silly rules of grammar



Those concerned that the use of _they, their, them_ as gender- and

number-free pronouns will somehow destroy the English language should do some

reading of contemporary British fiction and journalism, in which they will

find that this use is almost universal. Even so, it seems that English is

still alive. It might also be useful to examine the history of English to

observe how pronoun use has tended to simplify in general.