Free Republic

For the first time, The Associated Press now permits journalists to use "they" as a singular pronoun. The AP announced the style change Friday at the American Copy Editors Society conference in St. Petersburg, Florida. The change follows years of questions among copy editors, reporters and editors about the use of language specifically about people who are non-binary and don't use gendered pronouns. The change is in effect online and will be in the print edition of the 2017 AP Stylebook on May 31. The new edition includes 200 new and updated entries.

FRIDAY, May 20 (HealthDay News) -- For the average listener, the vowel sounds in an unfamiliar voice quickly give away the speaker's sexual orientation, a new study finds."I'm not sure what exactly the listeners are responding to in the vowel," study lead author Erik C. Tracy, a cognitive psychologist at Ohio State University, said in a news release from the American Institute of Physics. "Other researchers have done various acoustic analyses to understand why gay and heterosexual men produce vowels differently. Whatever this difference is, it seems that listeners are using it to make this sexual orientation decision." When hearing...