The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, and 4) given below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer.
1. When I ask the veteran feminist scholar and critic Sunita Rao whether she uses the term "womxn" to describe herself, she tells me, "I fought too hard for the word 'woman' to give it up now. I refer to myself as a woman."
2. Of the hundreds of thousands of Indian women active on social media, only a fraction use the newer spellings: a mere 9 percent prefer "womyn," and fewer than 2 percent recognise "womxn."
3. They have done this even though English, unlike French or Hindi, has no grammatical gender, so the change is about social meaning rather than grammar.
4. Activists seeking to make the word more inclusive, out of respect for trans and non-binary persons, have devised new spellings for it: first "womyn," and more recently "womxn."
1. When I ask the veteran feminist scholar and critic Sunita Rao whether she uses the term "womxn" to describe herself, she tells me, "I fought too hard for the word 'woman' to give it up now. I refer to myself as a woman."
2. Of the hundreds of thousands of Indian women active on social media, only a fraction use the newer spellings: a mere 9 percent prefer "womyn," and fewer than 2 percent recognise "womxn."
3. They have done this even though English, unlike French or Hindi, has no grammatical gender, so the change is about social meaning rather than grammar.
4. Activists seeking to make the word more inclusive, out of respect for trans and non-binary persons, have devised new spellings for it: first "womyn," and more recently "womxn."
Answer and solution
Correct answer: 4312
Solution
Sentence 4 opens by introducing the new spellings ("womyn", then "womxn") and who devised them. Sentence 3 ("They have done this…") must follow 4 — "they" = the activists — and explains that the change is social, not grammatical. Sentence 1 gives a personal response (Sunita Rao keeps "woman"). Sentence 2 concludes with data on how few use the new spellings. Order: 4312.