I'd just take the plural away from the name. Five people named Louis. Two Slayers. Eight Kings named Henry. Titles and other pronouns seem like the way to go. Mostly, "be consistent" is the most sensible advice I've seen. Readers will figure it out as long as you're consistent.
Mostly, "be consistent" is the most sensible advice I've seen. Readers will figure it out as long as you're consistent.
*nods*
It seems to come up a lot. My style guides keep saying "Well, there's this option, or this other option, or possibly this option. But remember: BE CONSISTENT."
I'm big on apostrophes for pluralizing weird things. Like, I still say B's and 1960's, even though apparently the fashion is to go without apostrophes nowadays. So, hip hip hooray to Mary-Sue's.
I totally do the B's thing, cause otherwise it looks funny, but sometimes I like how a decade looks with no apostrophe. 1960s. It just looks hip. IDK, I'm weird.
What's your opinion on using a pluralistic third-person pronoun in place of a singular non-gendered third-person pronoun? ("They" instead of "he" or "she".)
I'd say it's fine for short paragraphs, but when used over and over it starts making sentences fairly ambiguous - too many things that could be "they" in the one example.
I rather like the way RPG books handle things: D&D alternates between "he" and "she", and the Buffyverse RPG says flatout that women are the heroes in the Buffyverse, so "she" is used as the default.
One of my books on editing has "she" used for the author and the editor, and "he" for the publisher and the designer...
Heroquest says in the introduction that they will use "she" for the Narrator/GM and "he" for players, as a default throughout. Similar to your last example.
Alternating pronouns sounds logical, until you get he GM beig referred to as "he" then "she" then "he" again all within the course of a single paragraph. :-)
I'm not a fan of the unnecessary apostrophe. It's hard enough to learn to use them correctly without complicating matters. Sorry, Jane Espensen, but Buffies is just silly. Buffys is the plural; Buffy's the possessive.
Be consistent is great advice, but consistent and correct is even better.
It really is ridiculous. My editing class got into a discussion about "Louis' hat" versus "Louis's hat", got so passionate about it that there was soon shouting from both sides of the debate - and half an hour later we still didn't have an answer.
(Personally, I'd say that the S in "Louis" is unpronounced, and when you're talking about something he owns you're pronouncing an S - so clearly it should be "Louis's hat" with the first S silent... but a lot of my classmates are convinced I'm wrong.)
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*nods*
It seems to come up a lot. My style guides keep saying "Well, there's this option, or this other option, or possibly this option. But remember: BE CONSISTENT."
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I rather like the way RPG books handle things: D&D alternates between "he" and "she", and the Buffyverse RPG says flatout that women are the heroes in the Buffyverse, so "she" is used as the default.
One of my books on editing has "she" used for the author and the editor, and "he" for the publisher and the designer...
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Alternating pronouns sounds logical, until you get he GM beig referred to as "he" then "she" then "he" again all within the course of a single paragraph. :-)
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Be consistent is great advice, but consistent and correct is even better.
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True - but when books on language all disagree on what the correct form is, what are you supposed to do?
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My bible is The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation but English is a living language and things change, damn it. *g*
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It really is ridiculous. My editing class got into a discussion about "Louis' hat" versus "Louis's hat", got so passionate about it that there was soon shouting from both sides of the debate - and half an hour later we still didn't have an answer.
(Personally, I'd say that the S in "Louis" is unpronounced, and when you're talking about something he owns you're pronouncing an S - so clearly it should be "Louis's hat" with the first S silent... but a lot of my classmates are convinced I'm wrong.)
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