What pronoun would you use with a singular noun that is gender neutral?
My blog is late this week, because clients have kept me very busy. And maybe that Friday exhaustion is why I’m considering a radical idea: I think we should give in to the singular “they.”
This has been a hotly contested topic among editors in recent years. The English language has gendered singular pronouns and a gender-neutral plural pronoun. One woman is “she”; seven women are “they.” One boy is “he”; four boys are “they.” But when you have a singular noun that’s gender-neutral (most of them)—a participant, the owner—what pronoun do you use later?
The reason this is a relatively new problem is that for centuries writers solved the problem by ignoring “shes” and acknowledging only “hes.” That’s not the answer. You could use the awkward “s/he,” or keep careful score of alternating between “she” and “he,” or insist on the correct but cumbersome “he or she.”
When I read too much of that, I think of a character in Richard Russo’s book Straight Man. A professor’s colleagues call him “Orshee” because he’s always correcting people who use the masculine pronoun, adding “or she.” Don’t get me wrong—if the “he” is represented, the “she” must be, too. But maybe we can give them both a rest.
Consider a report about consumer behavior at tax time. The sentence with proper pronouns would read:
– Studies show that when a consumer waits until he or she gets his or her tax return to purchase a new television, he or she often overspends.
To avoid that jumble, an editor might try to change from a singular subject to plural:
– Studies show that when consumers wait until they get their tax return [or should it be “returns”?] to purchase new televisions [wait—does each buy one TV or do some buy more than one?]…
Stop the madness! The singular “they” makes the sentence much simpler:
– Studies show that when a consumer waits until they get their tax return to purchase a new television, they often overspend.
That sentence is streamlined and, most important, we’ve minimized the distraction between the two most important words: “consumer” and “overspend.” A few months ago, the Washington Post added the singular “they” to its stylebook. It’s not a blanket rule; the Post still recommends writing around the problem, but now it does allow “they” as a last resort.
We use it all the time in our speech: “Who called?” “I don’t know, they didn’t leave a message.” It’s less complicated than saying “he or she didn’t leave a message” and it’s clear that I don’t think a crowd of people called me at once. Not all evolutions in speech should, like, carry over to the written language, but I would welcome this simpler construction into my editing.
Now, don’t worry, clients; I’m not going to start imposing this preference of mine unless you follow the Post stylebook, or until the Chicago Manual of Style or AP Stylebook send down a decree from on high. But when THEY do, I’ll happily go along.
Sheila Gagen is the Director of Editorial Services at EEI Communications. To read more about Sheila, click here.
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