Do you really read Robert Jordan books because of the word choice and writing style?

It doesn't bother me personally if the writing style doesn't match, especially for something like gender nouns. You're right about the anachronism, for sure, but the proportion of readers who would notice it on their own is probably in the realm of half a percent or lower. So, uh, sorry you've had Jordan's gender themes ruined for you by stray nouns?

Though come to think of it, since we're on the topic of stylistic anachronisms, do you also complain about contractions? Contractions were used less frequently in the past, but they are fully represented in Jordan's writing. In fact, according to an online Wheel of Time full text search, Jordan used contractions quite a bit. "Can't" was used over 160 times each in EotW and TGH, 115 times in LoC, 103 times in KoD.

"Don't" also has hundreds of uses in each of Jordan's books. He used "couldn't", "wouldn't", "shouldn't", "could've", "would've", and lots of "he'd"/"she'd"/"we'd"/"they'd". Do those sorts of things bug you too?

Unfortunately I can't fully search Sanderson's text with this website I have, called Ideal Seek. They only have results from the first couple chapters of his books. Those results do show that Sanderson uses all the contractions too, and he probably uses "he'd"/"she'd" more than Jordan did if you extrapolate from those two searchable chapters.

Getting back to "person", I don't know how much Sanderson uses the word, or in what exact contexts you're upset about it, but Jordan's books get a dozen or so results each for the word as well. Including uses such as:

- "Only one person moved on the street" (EotW)
- "Every last person at the tables stared into his or her mug" (EotW)
- "the only other person without a topknot" (TDR)
- "The person facing them was a woman no older than Egwene herself" (TDR)
- "Once she did see another person walking ahead of her" (TSR)
- "the first person she asked" (LoC)
- "I am not a very nice person anymore" (ACoS)
- "One person who should have been there was not" (WH)
- "a certain person in whom they also apparently have an interest" (WH)
- "There was one person in the Tower she was sure she knew exactly where to find" (CoT)
- "She was not the one who had to marry the last person on earth she wanted to" (CoT)
- "But it makes a person feel" (CoT)
- "The finest cloak could not protect a person completely in a downpour like this" (KoD)

There were more, I just took the most obvious ones. I don't dispute at all that Sanderson must be using it to worse effect and in greater number though, since it's enough to make you want to post about it with such verve. Do you have some examples of Sanderson's use of the word, though? I'd be interested to see. But anyway, some of those examples above are places where Jordan could have used "man" or "woman" but didn't, too.

Sanderson can't be using "person" all the time, also. He used "man" 46 times in the fist two chapters of TGS, and 68 times in the first two chapters of ToM. "Woman" is interesting though. Sanderson only used it 15/25 times in the first two chapters of those books, while Jordan used it over 700 times in each of his four largest books (but only 110 times in The Eye of the World). There might be something about those four Sanderson chapters accounted for that would see less use of the word naturally, I'm not sure, but it could also be that he feels less comfortable using it. Obviously he doesn't dislike women, since a lot of his own main characters are women, but perhaps it's like you say and he'd less comfortable using "woman" instead of a more gender-neutral approach, whereas maybe he feels more comfortable with "man".

This got a little long winded. Anyway, I find it all sort of interesting.