Just to recap; "Ilk" is an Old Scots word meaning "same". The "his ilk" construction comes from the fact that the chieftain of the Clan Moncrieff refers to himself in formal correspondence as "The Moncrieff of that Ilk" (ie, the Moncrieff of that same, or *the* Moncrieff of Moncrieff). But obviously, people have at some point read this as "Moncrieff of that clan", and thus assumed that "ilk" is available as a quaint or vaguely posh-sounding word for "sort", "kind" or "gang".
Basically, you can use the word "ilk" in any situtation where "same" would also work. The last time I whined about this, Carrol came up with an elegant example:
"He joined the Communist Party in 1953 and left that ilk five years later".
But since the wrong version is so severely embedded, I would imagine that careful writers would avoid it altogether.
In other news, I have now removed the forwarding from this email address to my work one, so the bounce message which Rob got (and the ilk which have been annoying others for a while) ought to no longer be a problem.
d^2
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