linguoboy wrote:Only stylistic points here: who is strongly preferred for humans (although that is also heard) and if you're going to go the he/she route, be consistent. I strongly recommend, however, that everyone here adopt singular they. It's by far the most common form nowadays, making he/she sound pretty awkward. (Not to speak of generic he, which sounds unbelievably stuffy nowadays.)
[Alternatively, if you'd like to practice a particularly formal register in your posts, consider flagging them so we'll have a better idea what corrections to apply. My default assumption is that people are using a casual written register of the type appropriate for (e.g.) writing an e-mail to a friend or colleague.]
Sorry, I have never lived in an English speaking country, so they are uses of the language that I'm not still familiar with (just what I see in books). I will use "they" more often. It's just that for me, the sentence was in singular because of "the person next me", so introducing a plural didn't sound good to me. On the other hand, in Spanish we use this formula quite often: "Apreciadas/os compañeras/os". And I didn't know I was using a formal register