Editing My Article to Include Incorrect Grammar---Nice

[guywithashovel]

A little background: At work, I've been assigned journalistic duties on top of my regular job. Whenever a class goes on a field trip or has a guest speaker, I am supposed to tag along and take pictures and write an article about the event for inclusion in the newsletter that goes out to all the campuses.

A couple of weeks ago, one of the IT classes took a trip to a Microcenter store, and I went along and did what I was supposed to do. After getting the pictures and the notes, I wrote the article and sent it in. I just today received the email version of the newsletter that this article is published in. In it, I found that they edited my article to include this passage (which is a rewording of what I wrote in my original). The grammatical part is italicized.

"Students were given an assignment to complete during the outing. They were given information regarding a fictional client and their needs for a new computer. Students had to determine if the client could purchase a prebuilt system that suited all of their needs or if a custom built system or a hybrid would be necessary."

Maybe the rules have changed since then, but when I was in school, I was always taught that you only use their when you have a plural subject. If you have a singular subject, like client, you're supposed to use he, she, or it instead of their. But again, perhaps the rules have changed.

[Jack]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they establishes long-standing optional usage of singular "they". I once had this argument with a college English composition instructor. She thought that I should "never" use "they" singularly. It may just be yet another symptom of the schism between descriptive and prescriptive linguistics.

[linguist]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they establishes long-standing optional usage of singular "they". I once had this argument with a college English composition instructor. She thought that I should "never" use "they" singularly. It may just be yet another symptom of the schism between descriptive and prescriptive linguistics.

die hard descriptivist here.

also, the most recent edition of the mla handbook has (i believe) changed to include the usage of singular "they" as acceptable.

[Lace Neil Singer]

I think you can use it if the word "client" is just an example. If you used "he" and "his", nowadays you'd probably be accused of being sexist.

[Andara Bledin]

Reading over the edited sentence and making an assumption on what the original was, I would have used the phrase "the client's" in place of the article as the sentence as written in the OP is actually slightly ambiguous and the sentence as originally written would only be slightly less so.

^-.-^

[Bloodsoul]

I've yet to look into it, but I've heard that in the early days of English we did have non-gendered words to describe a person; I believe it might have been those words that ended up leading to "he, man, etc." and that the original male-oriented words died off (I think "wer" might have been one of them?).

[guywithashovel]

When I was in K-12 school, I was taught to use "he or she" or "his or her" when I had a singular subject that could be male or female. For instance, "The office manager should have his or her reports in by Monday."

Then, in college, one of my professors said that when she dealt with that situation, she would just say "she" sometimes and other times say "he." For example, at point in a lecture she might say, "When a psychologist does research, she will do it this way." Then at other point, if using a subject that could be male or female, she would say "he" or "his," whichever was appropriate.

I am glad to see that "they" is now gaining acceptance, because I would hate for people to read that article and think I flunked English class.

[lordlundar]

Client is a general term which can be used as a singular or as a plural (a family buying a computer counts as much as a client as a single person), so the use of their in the context covers all applicable basis, singular or plural.

At least, that's how I was taught. Now if it was more specific (person, gentleman, lady, etc) then use of he/she, his/her, etc would be more appropriate.