But there are lots of words you can use that imply figurative that aren't equivalent to it. Their primary meaning is something else. I posit that the misuse of literal is one of those.

I'm really confused here. The primary meaning of "literal" is not "figurative." But it's misused to mean "figurative." I thought we weren't initally agreeing but now I think we are?

Totally confused.

No, what I'm saying (really badly) is that when I misuse "literally" I'm not using it as an equivalent to "figuratively".

Which is to say, when I said "it's literally hell in that raincoat" I couldn't have equivalently said "it's figuratively hell in that raincoat". It's not a one for one substitution. However, every time I misuse literally, I am indeed implying figuratively. However, I'm implying figuratively with a whole lot of words that don't actually just mean that.

If what you initially meant was that you can't misuse literally without implying its opposite as well (even though that's not the main point of the misuse), then we agree.

If I don't know the gender of the doctor, are you telling me to reframe the sentence so that I don't need pronouns because English has nothing to offer me?

Or assign him a gender at random and be done with it.

I can assure you that 98.9% of my students are not experiencing the need you express here of precisely and exactly defining the parameters of their knowledge. They are just trying to get the damn paper finished by midnight.

Or assign him a gender at random and be done with it.

Yeowch. I hate this.

When someone says, "She literally exploded with rage," I imagine guts dripping from the ceiling. Couldn't we come up with an intensifier that isn't so hard on my imagination?

Almost any general statement can be made plural, and the occasional "his or her" isn't going to kill anyone. At least not literally.

In the absence of knowing someone's pronoun of choice (zie, hir, or something else) I would think that many transgendered and genderqueer people would prefer a gender neutral (though incorrectly plural) "they" to making assumptions about their gender, based on appearances, or to gender binarism in general.

In the absence of knowing someone's pronoun of choice (zie, hir, or something else) I would think that many transgendered and genderqueer people would prefer a gender neutral (though incorrectly plural) "they" to making assumptions about their gender, based on appearances, or to gender binarism in general.

This is what I mean about just using a plural subject. Works beautifully.

Ah, punctuation. I follow my universities' style guides, so as to write papers that don't get thrown in the bin by my professors. All (four of) the universities I've attended have used style guides that put the punctuation outside of the quotation marks. I wasn't taught this at school, though, so if it's not academic writing, I'm less concerned. Old habits die hard, nonetheless. I'm not a prescriptivist, as I'm a bit of a sociolinguist, but I fully accept the need for register, writing for a purpose, and meeting the requirements of a demanding readership.

It may have been a bit too soon for Alton Towers, although it was nice for a couple of hours. I huuuuurt. The Girl just crawled into bed next to me, clutching a bottle of water and demanding death. I put Eddie Izzard on for her. "Cake or death?"

Wedding pics, anyone? The first official batch came in (no fewer than *four* of our friends are professional photographers, so there are more to come - we are very lucky). TG's the slightly shorter one with the darker hair. [link]

ETA: OK, none of my direct links is working. That's annoying. I'll upload a few to flickr tomorrow. The site link's there, at least!

This is what I mean about just using a plural subject. Works beautifully.

Excuse my confusion, but I'm doing too many things at once and my head hurts like a bitch. Can you give me an example of a sentence about one person of unknown gender with a plural subject that satisfies your requirement?

I'm sorry to interrupt the crucial grammar discussion, but I need to squee! for a moment:

There's a good chance that after weeks of careful hinting and passing-the-word on my side, I will manage to create a rape crisis center training designed especially for leftist demonstrations organizers and activists (where a lot of sexual harassments are taking place and they're clueless about what to do about it. Arabs' rights first, women's last. I wish I was kidding). They took a lot of fire on this for almost a year now - mostly after asking from women to come in more modest dress for demonstrations - and did next to nothing to show they care about women's rights other than the basic "but we have women leaders in our demonstrations! Which means no one is harassed here!" speech.

Enter moi. It took almost two months of asking from leftists men to spread the word to the demonstration organizers (and a lot had to do with one feminist leftist man that actually helped and didn't just nod his head with "yeah, good idea"), but I just received an email via that one great men saying that they're ready to listen. Right now, I'm trying to get them a good deal for (or free) that training at the rape crisis center.

In my book, I call it a win. They were so goddamn persistent with they "we don't know what you mean by sexual harassment" answers. I really hope they'll take it seriously and won't back off at the last minute.

Edit: ehh, spell check, you bitca.