I am not angry with a feature of the language. I am angry with the people abusing a bug, for lack of a better word, that makes a simple language overly complicated. I am angry, because I didn't understand the whole comment. In my opinion that is not just my fault. It was, in many ways, terribly written. I think a little meta discussion is beneficial. Seeing that it is a question of logic and we are in a logic puzzle thread, I think, you should try to answer your question yourself.
> consistent
If that was a consistent feature, or better to say regular, there would be the -s inflexion on the verb, that the singular third person requires.
> well-understood
What does that even mean? In the referred article, were, as I said, at least two counts against the particular usage in the GP.
> How would you ...
What does it matter? Are you saying there is no other way? Why don't you give it a try yourself, it's not hard. For starters, just try replacing "they" with "F".
>What does it matter? Are you saying there is no other way? Why don't you give it a try yourself, it's not hard. For starters, just try replacing "they" with "F".
Lol. It does matter because you are bitching about using they when you don't even say what on earth are we supposed to say instead.
Replace they with the name? "If the light is on when Franklin gets to the room, Franklin turns the light off, and Franklin increments his or her counter." Yeah sounds perfectly natural. Pronouns are for losers.
So, my personal ability to rephrase the sentence is attacked, the pretense that there would be no alternatives is kept and my idea is dismissed as petty. That's just as expected.
Note that the above sentence is written in the objective way that I mentioned before. There is no way a third person singular gendered pronoun could creep in there, even if I was talking about you in the third person.
Unless Franklin was a transfinite gender fluid with multiple personalities, the use of they would be wrong there, according to the article you linked.
Yes, your alternative of simply repeating the noun several times instead of using a pronoun, which you avoid using because you feel its gender neutrality is a tool of the "transfinite gender fluid sjw brigade", despite being in use for 600 years now, is a petty solution indeed.
The first sentence of my last comment was what I had called objective. All the while, going by the repeated mentioning of me, ie. "you", the answer I got seemed much more focused on me. Well, I'm very egoistic, going by my mentioning myself so often here, so I'm flattered by your attention, but I suppose you are missing the point.
> consistent
If that was a consistent feature, or better to say regular, there would be the -s inflexion on the verb, that the singular third person requires.
> well-understood
What does that even mean? In the referred article, were, as I said, at least two counts against the particular usage in the GP.
> How would you ...
What does it matter? Are you saying there is no other way? Why don't you give it a try yourself, it's not hard. For starters, just try replacing "they" with "F".