The Sunday News
Charles Dube
WE begin today’s article by clarifying issues often taken for granted when writing. Most people are guilty of this one, including myself, as we are products of the old school. Most pronouns (such as he, him, his) were once used to refer to mixed groups of people. Females were understood to be included. For example, a sentence like, “A reporter must check his facts” was understood to apply to both male and female reporters.
But now everyone is encouraged to use gender-neutral wording. Using the given example, some gender-neutral possibilities for that sentence are: Reporters must check their facts. A reporter must check the facts, and a reporter must check his or her facts. We are encouraged to use gender-neutral language when the gender is unknown or could be either masculine or feminine. Presented here are three ways to avoid using a masculine pronoun when the antecedent may be feminine.
An antecedent is the noun or pronoun to which a pronoun refers or that a pronoun replaces. All pronouns must agree with their antecedents in number (singular or plural), gender (masculine, feminine, or neuter), and person (first, second, or third). Use his or her, he or she. Make the antecedent plural and use a plural noun. Eliminate the pronoun. A careful driver checks his car before travelling. Careful drivers check their cars before travelling. A careful driver checks the car before each journey.
When writing about people in general, people who may be either male or female, use non-sexist language. Use words that apply to all people, not specifically to males or females. For example, instead of chairman, which is gender specific, you could use the term chairperson. Traditional nouns for males and females in the same occupation (for instance, emperor and empress) are no longer encouraged. The noun emperor now refers to both males and females.
Hard to accept indeed but it is a fact.
Refer to the following list for their gender-neutral terms to use in your writing: Use actor instead of actress, businesspeople for businessman/woman, a member of the clergy instead of the clergy, craftspeople for craftsmen.
Use flight attendant instead of stewardess. Use handmade, synthetic, manufactured for manmade. Use humanity, human beings, people, instead of mankind. Use it, its (in reference to countries, ships instead of she, her, hers, he, his.
Use land of origin, homeland in place of mother country. Use letter carrier, mail carrier for mail man. Use police officer for policeman. Use server for waiter or waitress. Use supervisor for foreman. Use watch, guard for watchman.
Use worker for workman. Use workforce instead of manpower. Still on writing verbs, let us go back and examine the verb as a part of speech. Many students have problems with sentence construction because they do not have the basics of language such as parts of speech.
There are a number of definitions for the verb: a verb is a word which shows what people and things do, and what happens to them. In its simplest form, it is described as a doing word. Verbs describe action, thought, speech, state and process of change. A verb is also defined as a word that expresses an action or a state of being and is necessary to make a statement. For example, we can say, the thief jumped over the fence when cornered. Jumped describes what the thief did.
Verbs express time — present, past, and future — by means of various tense forms. The tense of a verb is the form which shows whether you are referring to the past, the present or the future. For things happening now, we use the present tense of a verb. For example, I can say to someone I am talking to now: Move back. Move is the verb in the present tense. For something which has already happened, we use the past tense. For instance, using the same verb move, I can say: He moved back. For something that will happen later, we use the future tense. Using the same verb move, I can say: He will move.
Note that here I have only referred to the simple tenses of the verb. There are other forms we will refer to later. All verbs have four principal parts; a base form, a present participle, a simple past form, and a past participle. All the verb tenses are formed from these principal parts. For example, let us take the word – open — as our principal part.
Open is the base form. The present participle is opening. Past form is opened. The past participle is opened.
Verbs are classified as regular and irregular verbs. A regular verb forms its past and past participle by adding –ed or –d to the base form. For example, move –moved, open – opened, laugh – laughed, dance –danced, talk – talked. An irregular verb forms its past and past participle in some way other than by adding – ed or –d to the base form.
Examples: begin – began, break – broke, buy – bought, sell – sold, come – came, draw –drew, and many others.
It has been proved beyond reasonable doubt that students who fail to master verb tenses at an early stage always struggle in correct sentence construction.
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