They Is Coming!
Not so long ago, he, him, and his were the personal pronouns used to refer not just to some man, but to any unspecified person. Common practice was to put things in this fashion:
“No person can be a great leader unless he takes genuine joy in the successes of those under him.”
In the 1960s and 1970s, we discovered that this use of masculine pronouns was blatantly sexist. Since then, we’ve been trying to find an elegant way to make our personal pronouns socially acceptable.
Here’s the most popular solution for print:
“No person can be a great leader unless he or she takes genuine joy in the successes of those under him or her.”
This is OK for print, but cumbersome for speech. After a few recitations, his or hers, he or she, and him or her get old.
When it comes to speech, the most popular approach is to use gender-neutral plural pronouns (e.g., they, them, theirs) to achieve the sexless elegance we seek:
“No person can be a great leader unless they take genuine joy in the successes of those under them.“
While this works well for speech, it isn’t considered acceptable in legal writing. The lawyer who writes they in place of he or she isn’t seen as progressive, but mistaken.
Which raises that age-old question: what to do?
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It’s now common to find the well-educated (e.g., lawyers and judges and presidents) using they as a singular, sexless pronoun when speaking. Yet, it remains totally unacceptable in legal writing, and so it will for years to come. That is, unless some authority declares it the proper thing to do.
According to 28 U. S. C. § 2072, the Supreme Court gets to set rules not just for itself, but for the federal district courts and courts of appeal. So, it could set a rule requiring federal courts (and those filing documents with federal courts) to use gender-neutral plural pronouns to refer to individuals of indeterminate sex. Once it does that, law schools will teach the new rule, and — in short order — they will be just like you: as good for one as many.
Something like this has already happened down under. The Australian Guide to Legal Citation has this declaration:
Gender-inclusive language should be used. The words ‘he’, ‘his’ and ‘him’ should not be employed as the supposedly neutral third-person singular. It is acceptable to use ‘he or she,’ ‘him or her’ or ‘his or her’. It is also acceptable to use the words ‘they’, ‘their’ or ‘them’ as neutral singular pronouns.
And Webster has also declared it proper:
The use of they, their, them, and themselves as pronouns of indefinite gender and indefinite number is well established in speech and writing, even in literary and formal contexts. This gives you the option of using the plural pronouns where you think they sound best . . . .
Fowler doesn’t like it, but he’s not of our time.
The change is inevitable. I say, let’s get this done and over with.
26 February 2007 at 10:16
[...] In a recent post, we considered a change well underway in English, a change prompted by the shift in relations between men and women. That change is this: they is becoming like you. Now, let’s consider another change, one that also springs from the shift. That change is the very popular use of a noun as an adjective. [...]
9 March 2007 at 12:22
I recently received a two point deduction on State of New jersey promotional exam for using “They” and “Their” instead of “The operator’ and “his or her” in the following context : The operator must receive permission to use the copier.
They must also sign their name in the logbook. The correct answer to this statement was: The operator must also sign his or her name in the logbook. I thought my choice flowed more smoothly.
20 November 2009 at 6:59
[...] is a problem we’ve considered before: the problem of the pronoun without sex. If we wanted to speak of an individual without reference to [...]