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Comment by teo_zero

20 hours ago

You can tell second-language speakers because they know when to use "its" and "it's".

Thanks to having kids, I ended up reliving lots of details from my own K-3 education and one of the things I clearly remember was coming up with my own mnemonic of remembering its vs it’s by comparing those to his vs he’s.

and knowing how to count to 1 to not use "they" xD

  • “they” as a non-gendered singular pronoun dates back hundreds of years.

    • People say that but I think it's gaslighting. I got marked down for using singular "they" in any writing I did in school in the 1980s. I didn't start to see it as a common "gender neutral" pronoun in professional writing (e.g. newspapers) until the last 20 years or so, and really not commonly until the past decade. It still trips me up when I see it used, I have to go back and make sure I didn't miss that more than one person was being discussed.

      I suppose one could go back and look at popular style guides from the 1980s and 1990s and see if they endorsed it.

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