I was asked, at great length, a question yesterday that I tried to read as other than "I get that nonbinary people want to use their pronouns of choice, but do the rest of us have to honor that?"
And I couldn't.
So: Yes. The rest of us do.
"But it's confusing!"
Pronouns are always confusing. Try copyediting a sex scene between two men.
AU: Not sure whose penis "his penis" is here. Can you clarify?
Joking quite towardst one side:
Yes, the use of they/them/their for one person at a time poses an editorial challenge in terms of clarity.
So just toss it onto the pile with the rest of the editorial challenges you have to rise to.
Indeed. And for the non-fiction editor, there is no possible way that using they/them could be more awkward than having to enforce “he or she” or “his/her” or “s/he”—all of which are journal house styles I had to follow earlier in my career—and then argue with the author about it.
And, happily, all the "he or she" variations are now the deadest ducks.
And if you're still using "he" as a pronoun for unspecified theoretical single people whose gender is either unknown or irrelevant:
Knock it off.
When I started copyediting in the early 1990s, authors were in the thick of avoiding the epicene "he" with all manner of "he or she" variations.
Because I was trained so strictly not to use the singular "they," I often edited to dispose of a pronoun altogether.
Which is not that hard.
Of course you'd pluralize a noun whenever you could so you'd have "Students should study whatever they want" rather than "A student should study whatever" etc.
But sometime in the last few years we (departmentally) agreed never to challenge or edit around an author's use of the singular "they."
P.P.S. In one of my prize possessions—an etiquette book from the early 1920s, in case you want to know how many servants you need to properly staff your apartment—the pronoun of choice for a single infant or toddler whose gender is irrelevant to the conversation is:
it
"It" as a pronoun for babies and small children is extremely common in the late Victorian & Edwardian books I read as a kid -- E. Nesbit, Frances Hodgson Burnett, etc.
That's how it works in German. I was proofreading a translated pamphlet about how a children's hospital is focused on centering the child and "it" was used to refer to this respected child throughout. (I did change it to be less jarring for English speakers.)
Oh, that was still common enough usage among people of my grandparents’ generation until at least the early 1980s. Not quite sure when the “it” became a he or she (when it started to walk? When it started to smoke? Don’t remember).
I can only say that it certainly wasn't she, because I don't know her.
Beyond that, I have zero recollection (and maybe I'm sorry I didn't make a note).
Query for inconsistency or lack of clarity? Sure.
But the era of receiving a ms. that uses the singular they and thinking you have to do something about it is over.
Here’s something I was thinking about the other day: do you think we’ll see the emergence of “they” combined with the usual singular present, i.e. “they walks to the store”? It feels too awkward to catch on, but some strict prescriptivist might try to make it.
Interesting idea though. I agree with @bcdreyer.bsky.social that it’s unlikely because they + plural is so ingrained. “Ze” in Dutch is both she and they, and you do differentiate between ze loopt (she walks) & ze lopen (they walk) but I guess that’s because (a) it imparts useful info and (b) custom
Also, speaking of words with z's in them, it's not at all surprising to me that the dominant nonbinary pronoun is now they or them, because I think that people will always lean toward something that exists over something that's concocted.
people sometimes go “singular they is ungrammatical, why don’t you make up a neutral pronoun?” to which the answer is : we did, for over 40 years, you wouldn’t use them!
what do you think of "themself" (for a generic person not a person who uses they/them pronouns)? it's one of those things that logically i feel i should support but viscerally i have a hard time pulling the trigger
Yes, that sounds familiar! I’m so glad we have (mostly) moved past that “rule.”
“Recast the sentence to avoid it” is also an excellent way of not getting into arguments with that one author who would otherwise die on the hill of the split infinitive “rule.”
Writerly fads used to sweep the newsroom with wearying regularity. A few were useful while many others were grotesque coinages never used in actual speech and faded ... eventually. 'Spokesperson,' 'chairperson' and (I swear) 'chair one,' when perfectly good gender-neutral terms already exist.
I’m a freelance sensitivity reader and my biggest repeat client is a college textbook publisher, and I still correct on average between 100-500 pronoun usages towards the gender inclusive “they” per text. It’s exhausting.
And by the time I get it, the manuscript has already been through several rounds of editors if not multiple published editions with “he or she” or singular “he” for general nonspecific use intact.
There was one journal I edited whose preference was to alternate default pronouns—e.g., the hypothetical defendant was “he” in section I(A) & “she” in section I(B). I didn’t hate the idea, but it was a PITA to keep track of—and of course way less inclusive than we thought at the time.
I was genuinely shaken when I saw Gore Vidal, in one of historical novels, use “he” as a pronoun to describe two people, one of whom was a woman. It just manifestly doesn’t work.
As I was digging around in this subject once, I noted that Anna Freud and (of all people) Peg Bracken both used the epicene "he."
It was incredibly engrained back then in the twentieth century, and people who assert now that it wasn't are not paying attention to reality.
I remember a guest speaker in one of my uni classes talking about gendered language in French; her example of the ridiculousness was this: « Trois mille femmes et un cochon sont passés, e accent aigu s ». The gender of the 1 male pig overrides the gender of the 3000 women, because of course it does🙃
I was taught "he" was the default. Made me mad even in grade school. Women identified as "Mrs. John Doe", is one of the reasons I didn't change my name when I got married, and because it was my name from birth.
Yep. Whole generations of women have been mad about this in a number of languages!
I did change my name when I got married--I was TIRED of spelling my surname every single time and of having it creatively mispronounced--but I didn't yeet it entirely, and I started using both about 10 years ago.
When I was in theology school in the 1980s we were required to write using gender-neutral framings or we would fail. Something something all God’s children.
I was taught the generic "he" in grade school (late '60s-early '70s). Along around the mid- to late '70s there was a push toward "he or she/his or her."
