Grammar girl here, today's topic is the use of feminine nouns such as actress and comedian.

These days, people often see such terms as sexist, but it's also common to hear at least

some of them, so what exactly are the modern rules for using such terms?

Actually, this isn't a matter of grammar.

It's about writing to minimize the potential for readers to draw conclusions you don't

want to convey.

When considering feminine nouns, first remember, it could be worse.

In some languages, most nouns have different forms for different sexes.

For example, in Spanish, a male lawyer is an abogado, and a female lawyer is an abogada.

Furthermore, in some languages, even verbs can have different forms depending on the sex

of their subject.

In Hebrew, ra means sa for masculine subjects, while ra ta means sa for feminine subjects.

And forgive me if my pronunciation is off, I haven't taken Spanish or Hebrew, so I hope

I'm close.

In Mandarin Chinese, a man can marry a woman, but a woman can only be married to a man.

Even in English, there used to be more female specific nouns than there are now.

Years ago, people used now obsolete nouns, such as teachers, soldiers, and ministers.

The fact that English is mostly abandoned female specific nouns like these is probably

part of the reason the remaining ones tend to attract attention.

Sometimes male and female specific nouns don't suggest problematic messages.

Pairs, such as prints and princess, duke and duchess, abbot and abbess, are unobjectionable.

In these pairs, the male specific term never refers to both males and females.

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