When you write the word 'blonde', do you change the spelling depending upon whether you are referring to a male or a female - ie 'blond' for male, 'blonde' for female?
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ANSWERS: 5
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Yes, I do.
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I always use Blonde. Maybe that's because I've never had to refer to males that way.
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Fair (pardon the analogy) point we ought to but most of us do not realise that blonde is one of the few words in English that is gender dependant.
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It is correct to do so, but few people even notice because it's so rare to refer to a male as a blond. And the word "a blonde" means a blonde female, which is why hardly anyone notices the spelling difference. Thanks to my grade school, I happen to be a very good speller, but only noticed this in my early fifties.
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It's correct to do so, and incorrect not to. That doesn't mean nobody ever gets it wrong, but to anyone who has sufficient education, the mistake is no less jarring than other errors like the there/their/they're confusion, or lose/loose, or to/too, or your/you're, or... Yeah well. There's a lot of it about. It's not the only common English word to change based on gender: another pair is fiance (male) and fiancee (female). You see this mistake made less often, possibly because "fiance" just sounds more French, so people remember that there's something weird about it.
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