I work in the corporate world, and one of our fill-in letter templates refers to the customer in the third person as "he / her"
"They" is not only easier to look at and read, but takes less space and doesn't change the meaning of anything.
Yeah, I just meant from a purely utilitarian perspective, saying "them" / "they" is more economical.
But I also do think we need a new word to differentiate between a singular person, and a group of people. It is a bit weird.
I read a lot, & I'm old, so I stumble every time I read "they" or "them" in a novel and it's referring to 1 individual. I have to remind myself it's that person's preferred pronouns. One day it'll be 2nd nature, but it's still confusing for me. But again, I'm old. I need to get over it.
They're always "I won't remember pronouns, JOHN" until you say "that's fine just say my name everywhere other people would put a pronoun" and suddenly they can't fucking say your name, either, what a ~mystery~
One of my books has a terf character, Karen. Karen insists Karen doesn't have pronouns. The narration refers to Karen as Karen everywhere it would normally have a pronoun
It was surprisingly hard to write Karen's chapters. I had to edit out pronouns that slipped in afterwards
I don't use pronouns for myselt (because I don't like how any of the big three make me feel) and I find that everybody trips up over the same reflexive noun structured sentences where a pronoun is being substituted for an implied noun.
It's so second nature to use pronouns of some type. Substituting a pronoun for a pronoun is simple. Substituting it for something else is more difficult.
But it can be done with a bit of thought.
Language never stops changing in the most amazing ways. I'm curious to see how this develops!
Prior to the singular 'they' making a resurgence in modern English, 'it' was often used for animals, especially animals of unknown sex.
Go back a few generations, and 'it' was also applicable to children!
The English language doesn't technically mess with animacy, but our pronoun 'it' is used almost exclusively these days for non-animate objects, rather than living beings or people.
Unless someone tells you that 'it' is part of their pronouns, using it like that will likely be taken as an insult.
