New Year Resolution

Consider this: Every action has a beginning and an end. If the state of everything related to an activity is the same at the beginning and end, environments can stay organized without needing to straighten things out periodically, and all that is left to do is regular maintenance of things. This may seem obvious to many, but how many take it to heart? Who has the self awareness to track all their overlapping activities? This kind of resolution entails changing one’s mind fundamentally. The beginning of activities is often obvious, but many times the end may not be, especially when someone tells themselves that they will return to the activity soon. So, not only does this suggestion imply a heightened awareness, but also an ability to commit to finish what one starts, or at least stop before doing something else.

Third Person Singular Gender Neutral Pronouns

As awkward as the title of this entry is, every serious writer of the modern era has at least thought of the issue and at most spent numerous hours searching for a suitable solution. Hypothetical sentences often reveal this problem. For example: “Suppose someone enters the valley from the north. In that case he should…” To the modern ear, this seems presumptuous, and yet what alternatives exist?

A writer could choose to use “she”, but then they would needlessly alienate a portion of their audience. They could choose to use “he or she”, which works, but is cumbersome after the fifth time. Furthermore, they could abbreviate this to “he/she” or “s/he”, but this offends those whose mind’s ear is active while reading. They could even attempt to use “one”, but its object pronoun form is awkward. For example: “This would likely always give one a headache”. They could try avoiding the issue by using plural subjects in hypothetical situations. This could work, but is definitely awkward in argumentative passages. They could use random proper nouns, but this sounds colloquial, is unfair to foreign speakers who may not know all proper nouns’ gender (some are even ambiguous), and presents the writer with the task of dodging gender bias in their selection of proper nouns.

Finally, they could adopt what most people use in the vernacular: “they”. The failing of this is that academics object to it¹. The interested reader should research this, and provide comments on this article about extant common objections. Some academics’ suggested solution to this problem is to introduce new standard pronouns to specifically solve this problem. Removing the “th” from all forms of “they” while preserving the third person conjugation is one of the most practical proposals. This proposal is unlikely to ever enter common use, because the culture of modifying the common tongue calcified some time after the genesis of modern English and has remained since².

1. See the “Gender-Neutral Pronoun FAQ” as an example.
2. The subject of whether common English should undergo significant changes to make it a more uniform language is worthy of debate.

Introduction

Welcome to linefragment

This is an anthology of anything. It isn’t just rants, essays, short stories, or treatises. It isn’t just poems, epics, farces, or cynical satires. It’s any of them. I hope those of you who read it will enjoy it and provide feedback. I will consider these entries to be live documents, and though I will create them, I consider their refinement to be a collaborative process, insofar as interest is present. For that matter, some articles may cease to exist altogether if I or the persuasion of others deems them unworthy of the page.

I wish to remain anonymous to everyone but those whom I invite, because I wish the content to stand for itself; ideas interest me, not petty occurrences or acquaintances that will all fade into oblivion.

To summarize, the tone I will strive to project in these writings will be philosophical in nature. No subject will be taboo, and all ideas will be absurd until proven correct. Logic will be King and opinions will be laughed out the door.

So read, argue, and suggest, and most of all be influenced.