>"and leave himself/herself"
Would it be proper to replace this "himself/herself" with simple self? And what do we call gender neutral person if not?
Would it be proper to replace this "himself/herself" with simple self? And what do we call gender neutral person if not?
No.
> And what do we call gender neutral person if not?
they/them/their has been extremely common for gender-neutral abstract use for centuries. It spent a while with strong bias against it in formal contexts but that's weakening recently.
One/one/one’s is less controversial in formal settings, but requires a somewhat different writing style.
“Botvinnik famously recommended that a professional chess player should only play 80 tournament games a year and leave himself/herself time to think about chess.”
might become:
“Botvinnik famously recommended that, as a professional chess player, one should only play 80 tournament games a year and leave oneself time to think about chess.”
or, another option, is do it without any pronouns at all:
“Botvinnik famously recommended a professional chess player only playing 80 tournament games a year and leaving time to think about chess.”
Everybody is different. Playing lots of games gives you the ability to experience playing different types of positions against different players, which can feed into your training in terms of figuring out which areas to focus on.
If you want to get better at chess you will have to study, but I don’t think playing is in itself negative. Only if you never study and only play.
There are also practical things like managing the clock and managing your attitude that you can only practice in games.
Botvinnik's quote refers to tournament games, that is, long, over the board, classical time control games that take hours to play. It says nothing about playing practice/friendly games, or playing other time controls.
Incidentally, I'm familiar with the recommendation (actually I thought it was a maximum of 50 games in a year) but I can't find any source for it online. Does anyone have a source?
That is not grammatical. One rendition in such a style might be:
> Botvinnik famously recommended that a professional chess player only play 80 tournament games a year and leave time to think about chess.
Though I would prefer to substitute for 'year and leave time to think' one of: 'year, to leave time to think', 'year, leaving time to think', or even 'year, to live time for thinking'.
There is also an ambiguity in the original: 'a professional chess player' may be taken as definite; that is, it may seem as though the advice was directed at a specific chess player. To avoid the possibility of such an interpretation, I might prefer the rendition using 'one', or something like this:
> Botvinnik famously recommended that professional chess players only play 80 tournament games a year, to leave time for thinking about chess.
The one problem is that many people have difficulties with distinguishing usages. This is especially a problem for foreign learners, but even native speakers are not immune to naive generalizations.
A: They are after you!
B: Who, a single they or multiple theys?