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This He/She Talk

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Something that has been irritating me is this use of he/she in writing. I have really noticed this in some of the things I have been reading lately, and I haven't noticed it for a while because most of the books I do read now come from the 19th and early 20th century with the exception of technical material. For example when writing about both genders back then, you didn't use he/she, you just used he. It makes for a mouthful when you try to read he/she out loud. Worse yet if you aren't accustomed to reading from that time period you think when he is used it only refers to men while it is gender inclusive. In Hebrew if you want to refer to a mixed group of men and women, you use the masculine plural pronoun 2nd or 3rd person. With Greek you try to match the gender of your pronoun to its antecedent. So if you are referring to a secretary for example, and the word for secretary in Greek is lets say feminine in gender, yet you have a man in that position, and you don't want to use the word secretary again but refer back to it, you would use the feminine pronoun rather than masculine. Does anyone else share the irritation?

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