Thursday, March 4, 2010

A grammar lesson from 007

MI6 seeking for "relationship-building skilled" people:



This is not a rare occasion - you can easily find similar ads in newspapers and surely you'll find them surfing popular job boards.

Also, note the pronoun "they" used with a "person", a legal method to avoid the problem of choosing between "he" or "she" when gender is unknown.

It is also okay to use "she" in that case (at least I've met that in literature and press), for the male gender is understood by default, so it's less impolite. And I've encountered clumsy "he or she" turn many times before. Apparently, the only way to make a mistake here is to use male chauvinistic "he".

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