GEICO, the second-largest vehicle insurance underwriter in the US, has decided it will no longer cover Tesla Cybertrucks. The company is terminating current Cybertruck policies and says the truck “doesn’t meet our underwriting guidelines.”

  • DigitalDilemma@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    The best English literature doesn’t follow the basis of most convenient or shortest. Sometimes there are other reasons to choose a word of phrase.

    The plot of Romeo and Juliet could be rewritten in a paragraph but probably wouldn’t have had the same impact.

    • lennivelkant@discuss.tchncs.de
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      2 months ago

      True, but this isn’t prose or high literature. What reason do you suggest why “his or her” would be preferable to “their” in this context?

      The prescriptivist “It’s grammatically incorrect” argument doesn’t hold much water when it has been used since middle English.

      In a poem, I can see the thought:
      “I tried to fit the cadence of this clause
      Within the measure of this poem’s form
      Which has in past and present be the norm
      By which this poem, too, seeks to adhere.
      This is my authorial choice’s cause
      for my decision not to use a “their”.” But if to find an alternate way to word
      Your writing’s pronouns strikes you as absurd
      I nonetheless opine that you still ought
      To make the token effort to include
      With “their” all people by the same respect
      That you for yourself would from them expect.
      Refusing this, I feel, would be quite rude.

      • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        Comments here are a short form of writing, therefore people are allowed to phrase things and say things however they would like to. You won’t know someone’s intent before reading, so the way they write makes a difference.

            • lennivelkant@discuss.tchncs.de
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              2 months ago

              Yes, of course, nothing wrong there. I’m asking what’s wrong with using “they” instead, given that there seems to be some pushback

              • Warchortle18@sh.itjust.works
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                2 months ago

                I think the pushback is coming from that’s how the person talk and or wanted to write the sentenc. Why was it so important to you to tell him a different way to write his sentence?

                • lennivelkant@discuss.tchncs.de
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                  2 months ago

                  I wanted to offer a suggestion I felt is better for two independent reasons. I didn’t say “you should have said”, simply wrote why I consider the more inclusive they more convenient too.

                  I don’t think there was any active “want” behind that way of writing so much as habit (“how the person talks”). Somehow a lot of people seem bent on opposing that suggestion though, and while I don’t want to make assumptions, I’m starting to think it isn’t out of some deep disdain for convenience.