“early middle age” seems about as accurate as “late childhood” for Paul 😆

Oh yes that’s the one place I’ve seen it: surgeons who called other surgeons ‘Mr’ if they had graduated from ‘Dr’!

Went to reply and Bluesky tells me ‘This post was marked as written in Swedish by its author’ – bravo Ollie 😆
Which countries does the don’t-use-first-names thing actually happen in?? Sounds like a TV thing!

Laughed at the way you used quotation marks in several places 😆

Hang on… I added "font" to show that this isn’t because it’s ambiguous.

Perhaps only if they’re on google fonts?

Looking through the journals that commit this sin, I don’t consider submitting papers to them and perhaps this is a subconscious reason. Essentially showing they don’t care about readers’ experiences (buttressed by various typographic choices).

You mean it sounds “correcter”

On the rare occasions it happens this feels like winning the lottery

😆

That’s exactly it. I guess the old-fashioned use would imply asking “What does he want” every time… sounds awkward.

Good grief

Ah yes, ‘dreamt’ not ‘dreamed’. No idea why I thought of it but imagine a reader telling someone else about the beginning of the book, with no other knowledge (yet) of the book’s narrator.
Would this use of ‘they’ sound wrong to some generations?

Would the use of ‘they’ have been unavailable to earlier generations, who would instead have to say ‘he or she’?

If so, I’m surprised – it’s been a valid way to refer to an unspecific/unknown person as long as I’ve been alive!