Gender Nonspecific Pronoun

[semper_augustus]

Some prefer the slashed him/her. Some prefer the Plural of Ambiguity to their language. I've even seen hir used. Which do you use? One of the above or something else I've not heard of? I'm curious.

Comments

[lacrimaeveneris]

I'm old school- I often use "he." That said, I go back and forth between him/her and "their," simply because they're easier to understand. I find that many people don't understand hir/zir.

[semper_augustus]

I tend to use "their," more often than not. But I get the "he" usage. I learned that from Heinlein: the masculine includes the feminine when the gender is non-specific. It's in all the grammar books.

[lacrimaeveneris]

Yeah... oddly enough, I learned it from my mother. :)

[thewronghands]

I'm also a "their" person.

[cb4260]

I tend to use and abuse 'their' to a huge extent. 'Him/her' is good in some situations, but most of the time, it's just too much verbiage for me. Hir can be a fun word, I just don't get around to using it super often. To me, the problem with intentionally gender neutral pronouns like hir or zir (which I actually like better, because it sounds more different when read aloud) is that I tend to think more of a person who's gender you can't immediately read/identify when you see them (such as a very feminine man or a woman in very masculine clothes who might be misread as a man at first glance). Their (for me at least) brings to mind someone with a more 'normal' gender expression where you just don't know whether it's a man or a woman because it's an abstract situation, and you don't know who it might be (i.e. any random reader). That may be totally technically incorrect, but it's just my impression - in other words, hir/zir may be meant to refer to any random person, when you don't know if their a he or a she. No idea if what I

[alanscottevil]

I use "their" in spoken English all the time. It's the wave of the future!

In writing, I'll usually go for s/he or "his or her", or re-word the sentence to avoid the whole issue.

[japantheman]

I've always thought it made the most sense to do it s/he. It always made enough sense to me.

Otherwise I'll just chose one or the other and ignore people who think I'm being sexist by leaving one or the other out. (Plus no one ever really complains anyway as longs as I stay consistent) I was taught by a 6th grade English teacher not to use "they" because it's plural but I still use it sometimes. According to my linguistings book for the class I'm taking it's in usage enough that it's acceptable because language is about usage and not about archaic perscriptive rule systems.

[dracodis]

I tend to use "they" and its forms most often. Reading up about it, it has a history, is in common practice already enough to have developed linguistic rules, and came about naturally, unlike the "hir"/"zir" forms, which I admittedly don't like, especially "hir" as it looks like it would be pronounced like "here" and "hear", and I don't like homonyms.

If the pronoun doesn't need much repetition or if it's for a formal paper, I'll also make use of "he/she" and the good ol' fashion "one", although "one" doesn't always fit for the third person like it does for the ambiguous "you".