pronouns

The toughest part of speech is trickier than ever.

If you’re a writer, you may go through life cringing in public or constantly yelling at the TV, especially at unscripted reality shows and sometimes even the news. You’re correcting all of the “him and I” and “she and me” references. You’re rolling your eyes at “just between you and I.” You’re punching your monitor at “your” to mean “you’re.” Misuse of pronouns has become epidemic to the point that even though you’re a writer, you may be unsure of how to use pronouns correctly.

That’s okay, no judgment, especially since the option of the plural “they” as a singular personal pronoun has added a wrinkle to the whole business. Let’s tackle that first, starting with a history lesson.

The Absence of “Her”

Did you know that there used to be a gender-neutral singular pronoun? It was he/him/his. The masculine singular was considered the proper choice when the gender wasn’t known and with an indefinite pronoun such as everyone, nobody, or anyone. You’ve heard, “He who is without sin cast the first stone”? That’s the bible being male-centric.

Back then we would write:

• Everyone who wants a cookie should raise his hand.
• If you know anyone who’d like to join us, please invite him.
• Nobody wants the car he drives to smell like old cheese.
• I heard that someone came forward, saying he was an eyewitness.

This thinking also came with sayings like “every man for himself,” “man of the hour,” “teach a man to fish” and “dead men tell no lies.” When males were creating the sayings, there was not much thought to including females. So they decided that the male pronoun would be fine for all living beings. And I mean no offense to the bible, because this went on long after biblical times.

Then the women’s movement came along and introduced the concept of replacing “mailman” with “letter carrier,” “chairman” with “chairperson” and so forth until the conversation got around to pronouns. For a while, the feminists among us seemed to settle on some variation of these:

• Everyone who wants a cookie should raise his or her hand.
• If you know anyone who’d like to join us, please invite him/her.
• Nobody wants the car s/he drives to smell like old cheese.
• I heard that someone came forward, saying he/she was an eyewitness.

“Their” First Go-round

The “s/he” option doesn’t work in verbal communication, but it didn’t matter because people in general weren’t going with any of these clunky, cumbersome usages. But they weren’t using masculine-only pronouns, either. All along, there was some precedent and much will for using the plural they/them/their as the singular pronoun when a gender-neutral need arose:

• Everyone who wants a cookie should raise their hand.
• If you know anyone who’d like to join us, please invite them.
• Nobody wants the car they drive to smell like old cheese.
• I heard that someone came forward, saying they were an eyewitness.

Note that “they” in this construction takes the singular “an eyewitness.” That would change in a sentence with a plural noun:

• I heard that several people came forward, saying they were eyewitnesses.

Educated Guesses

Grammarians never accepted the plural followup pronoun to a singular noun, proper noun or indefinite noun. The singular everyone should take the singular his or the singular her, they reasoned. Some language hobbyists, or perhaps pedants, even continued to use the old-fashioned one and one’s:

• If one wants a cookie, one should raise one’s hand.
• One does not want the car one drives to smell like old cheese.

As you can imagine, that construction did not catch on with the modern masses.

I remember Parenting magazine assigning either he/him/his or she/her/her to each article and then being consistent throughout that article. So it appeared as if some articles were written about parenting sons and some about parenting daughters. The words “baby” and “child” are gender-neutral until you have to follow up with a pronoun!

Female pronouns always were used when the writer or speaker knew the person was a woman. You could write or say:

• The pediatrician handed the prescription to her assistant.
• Our discussion leader was knowledgeable in her subject.
• The student stated her name and took her seat.

At that time, with a subject like “nurse,” the writer would most likely assume that “she” and “her” were the most appropriate pronouns. That was the exception to always selecting the male pronoun for an unknown gender, and it was insulting. “Teacher” might be followed by a female pronoun, while “professor” would take the male.

Pronouns for Gender Identity

That’s the way things stood for quite a few years. Those who fancied themselves users of proper English grammar followed singular nouns with some form of singular pronoun, while the rest of the people used the plural and casual they/them/their.

Then gender identity entered the discussion, with people sharing their preferred personal pronouns and some asking to be identified by “they/their/them” as a nonbinary option. That legitimized the use of the plural pronoun to refer to a singular noun, so grammarians took another look at the option that already was the most popular in speaking, if not writing. Here it is again to remind you:

• Everyone who wants a cookie should raise their hand.
• If you know anyone who’d like to join us, please invite them.
• Nobody wants the car they drive to smell like old cheese.
• I heard that someone came forward, saying they were an eyewitness.

Is that acceptable now? You know what? Yes. It solves the problem so handily. It’s fast and dirty, yet also clean in terms of simple, intuitive and easily understood.

In formal writing, though, I’m still hesitant to use plural pronouns with singular nouns and proper nouns unless I’m referring to someone who I know uses the personal pronouns they/them/their. I admit that I got sucked into “he or she” and “him/her” for a while. Mostly, though, I’ve always tried to avoid the problem. I use plural subjects so that I can use plural pronouns, I get familiar and employ the second-person “you” and “your,” which conveniently are both singular and plural, and I even use passive tense to skirt the issue. Also, don’t underestimate the power of the word “a” to replace a pronoun.

Plural noun, plural pronoun:

• People who want cookies should raise their hand.
• If you know people who’d like to join us, please invite them.
• No drivers want the cars they drive to smell like old cheese.

Second-person word instead of third-person word:

• If you want a cookie, please raise your hand, or
• All of you who want a cookie should raise your hand, or
• Raise your hand if you want a cookie.
• You do not want the car you drive to smell like old cheese.

Passive voice:

• Anyone who wants to join us should be invited by you.
• A car smelling like old cheese is not desired by anyone.

Replacing a pronoun with “a” and other rewording:

• Raise a hand to receive a cookie.
• I’ll hand out cookies to everyone with a raised hand.
• Please invite anyone who’d like to join us.
• Nobody wants a car smelling like old cheese.
• Old cheese is not the best odor for a car.

Plural Pronouns for the Unknown

I still use those strategies to try to avoid the problem, but there are times I now use they/them/their even when not writing or speaking about a person who has shared their personal pronoun to be “they/them/their.” See what I did in that sentence? I wrote “their personal pronoun” following up the singular “a person.” I do that now, but I especially did it to demonstrate the case of knowing the person’s preferred identity.

Now the hardest question: What if you’re naming someone specific but you don’t know the person’s preferred pronouns? And see what I just did with that sentence. I repeated “the person’s” rather than using “their.” It avoids the issue. But you can’t keep repeating the noun or proper noun and never use a pronoun. Here’s an example:

• I spoke with the new teacher over the phone, and the new teacher said the new teacher’s name was Terry. That’s all I know about the new teacher.
• I spoke with the new teacher over the phone, and they said their name was Terry. That’s all I know about them.

In that case, let’s say you couldn’t tell much by the voice and have no idea what the new teacher looks like. But now let’s change that and say you met the new teacher in person, and the person appeared to be a woman. Should you stick with the above “they/their/them,” or should you say:

• I met the new teacher, and she said her name is Terry. That’s all I know about her.

This is a tough call. Your interpretation that the person looks like a woman and then your decision that the person will prefer she/her/her are just assumptions. I think it’s still most respectful to figure out another way to say it. Language gives you so many options:

• I met the new teacher, introduced to me as Terry. That’s all I know about the teacher.
• I met Terry, the new teacher. I don’t know anything other than the name.

On this Topic, Memoir Writing Is Easy

Luckily, in writing a memoir you won’t have a lot of these problems. Mainly I want to tell you that if you find yourself cornered into using they/them/their with a singular noun, proper noun or indefinite pronoun, you probably can go ahead and use that plural. But if you can reword it, in my view, do that instead.

Part 2 will address pronouns in general, since even before this issue they were a pain in the neck.