Jose Carillo's English Forum

English Proficiency Tests => How Good is Your English? => Topic started by: Bunty on October 11, 2010, 02:23:03 PM

Title: Layman – English editing.
Post by: Bunty on October 11, 2010, 02:23:03 PM

To avoid sounding unintentionally sexist you could consider replacing layman with layperson in the singular and laypeople in the plural: in layperson’s terms; scholars and educated laypeople alike.

Title: Re: Layman – English editing.
Post by: alicabirrel on March 19, 2012, 11:05:05 AM

You could consider doing this, but why would you?  Unlike demonstratively stating "his" in a gender un-neutral tense, layman is a commonly-accepted colloquialism and changing it to layperson is not really necessary when it comes to writing.  For someone to become offended by the usage of this term is almost a non-issue in my opinion.