I was editing a few projects for a client recently, and I noticed a tendency to use constructions such as “him or her“, “his or hers”, “he or she”, and so on. Sometimes, the author replaced the or with a slash.
The reason for this, I presume, is that they want to be gender inclusive, but the once traditional way of using the masculine pronouns of him, he, and his is sexist. And, they’d argue, there’s no pronoun in English designed as a gender neutral pronoun, at least not for humans. You could use it, but that seems cold and insensitive.
However, English actually does have a third person singular pronoun, and it’s been in place for about 700 years.
They, their, and them.
Wait. Before you get worked up on this, let’s review some things.
History of they as a singular pronoun
In Stephen Harrod Buhner’s Ensouling Language, we read the following on page 358:
While the universal he did enjoy about a century of primary use, the use of the singular they has been in common use since the thirteenth century, a much longer duration. For much of that time, it was the term of choice for a universal pronoun. (Interestingly enough, some writers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries refused to ever use the universal he, believing it too sexist. They were shouted down by the mandatory school reformers.) The controversy over singular they is exactly the same as that over split infinitives. The problem is human created, not inherent in usage.
So, that’s interesting. The use of “they” as a singular pronoun isn’t a recent practice; it’s been around for, as I said, over 700 years. In fact, according to Wikipedia, many respected classical authors have used “they” as a singular pronoun, including the following:
- Geoffrey Chaucer in The Pardoner’s Prologue (1395)
- William Shakespeare in Hamlet (1599)
- Jane Austen in Mansfield Park (1814)
- George Bernard Shaw in Caesar and Cleopatra (1901)
Support varies among style guides
Common style guides are not unanimous in their approach to this usage.
Chicago supports it, for example:
“The singular they. A singular antecedent requires a singular referent pronoun. Because he is no longer accepted as a generic pronoun referring to a person of either sex, it has become common in speech and in informal writing to substitute the third-person plural pronouns they, them, their, and themselves, and the nonstandard singular themself. While this usage is accepted in casual context, it is still considered ungrammatical in formal writing.” (The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition, §5.46)
while APA rejects it:
“A pronoun must agree in number (i.e. singular or plural) with the noun it replaces.
Correct: Neither the highest scorer nor the lowest scorer in the group had any doubt about his or her competence.
Incorrect: Neither the highest scorer nor the lowest scorer in the group had any doubt about their competence.” (Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th Edition. p. 79)
Also, of note, in January 2015, the American Dialect Society voted the singular “they” as word of the year.
It’s too confusing. People think I’m talking about more than one person.
I get that, but we’ve been through this before in English.
Did you know you used to be exclusively used as a second person plural pronoun? The singular version of it was thou, which you can find in older written works like the Holy Bible and Elizabethan dramas (such as Shakespeare’s works). For about 300 years prior to Shakespeare’s time, thou (and its cousins thy and thine) were used to indicate intimacy and familiarity. It could also be used as a sign of disrespect toward those in positions of authority if speakers used thou instead of the more formal you.
Which is probably why it started to fall out of favour about 400 years ago, being slowly replaced by the more respectful you as a universal second person pronoun. Thou persisted, but eventually it all but succumbed except in a few isolated pockets in the British Isles and Canada.
Today, no one thinks twice about using a historically plural pronoun to refer in the second person to a single individual. The same thing could happen to they, although after 700 years, it still faces opposition.
It’s not actually gender neutral.
While we think his/hers is a gender neutral option, it’s still pretty binary, leaving out people who don’t identify as strictly male or female. It tries to be inclusive, but it includes only males and females, nothing in between.
But wait. It’s too awkward.
Some people claim that using they to refer to one person is too awkward, that people will be confused regarding who you’re referring to. But that rarely happens when using you/your. Besides, most of us already use they in everyday language, and it rarely is an issue.
When you say, “Hey, who left their wallet here?” no one assumes you think more than one person owns the wallet.
Besides, is using they really more awkward than she/he? I argue that the latter is more awkward.
And it’s time we drop the awkward she/he, him/her, his/hers.