On a Linguistic Hole

There's a hole, there's a hole, there's a hole in the bottom of the... English language.

Ahem. What I'm referring to is a linguistic “hole” that, while it's been especially contentious in the politically correct atmosphere of the last 40 years or so, has vexed writers for centuries. I'm talking about our language's lack of a neuter, singular third-person personal pronoun.

I've written extensively about pronouns before, but to summarize, a pronoun is a word that stands in for a noun. A personal pronoun is, as the name implies, a pronoun that stands in for a person or group of people. 'I,' 'you,' 'he,' 'she,' 'we,' 'us' and 'they' are all examples of personal pronouns.

In English, we don't have masculine and feminine nouns, so when referring to objects, we use neutral pronouns such as 'it,' 'that' and 'which.' Personal pronouns, however, do have genders. We use 'he' to refer to a singular man or boy, 'she' to refer to a singular girl or woman and 'they' to refer to a group of people regardless of gender.

Most of the time, this system works just fine. When we have to refer to a singular person of indeterminate gender, though, it starts to break down. For instance, if I write “A student should take care to hand in ___ homework,” which pronoun should I use? Should I write 'his homework,' 'her homework' or something else entirely?

Historically, one of the most common conventions in literary English was to use the generic 'he' (along with 'his,' 'him' and 'himself' as needed). A century ago, I could have written “a student should take care to hand in his homework” without causing controversy.

The other common method was to take our only neuter personal pronoun, 'they,' and make it singular. In this case, I'd write “a student should take care to hand in their homework.” This usage of 'they' also comes with the singular 'them' and the made-up reflexive pronoun 'themself' (as opposed to 'themselves' for the plural usage).

Both of these approaches are problematic. The generic 'he' is controversial because it's perceived as sexist, as we're implicitly asked to assume that this person of indeterminate gender is male. The singular 'they' doesn't have that social baggage, but it's seen as grammatically incorrect. 'They' is supposed to be a plural word, and we can't just arbitrarily alter the meanings of words to better suit our current cultural climate.

The current search for political correctness in language has given us, as best I can tell, six possible ways to fill the hole.

1. Use the generic 'he,' as described above. While still popular in some contexts, this is politically problematic. I'd only recommend using it in contexts where it's pretty much a given that the person in question is male.
2. Flip the script and use the generic 'she,' as in “A student should take care to hand in her homework.” This is an approach found in many academic documents of the past three or four decades. I consider it just as problematic as the generic 'he;' only use it when the person in question is very likely to be female.
3. Use the singular 'they,' as described above. While politically correct, this option is grammatically problematic. Go ahead and use it in everyday speech, but be careful in formal writing.
4. Alternate between 'he' and 'she' over the course of multiple sentences. For instance, “A student must take care to hand in his homework. Additionally, she must participate in class.” This approach is technically fair, but it's confusing for the reader, and the primary goal of almost any written work is to communicate clearly.
5. Be fair to both genders by writing 'he or she' whenever a singular pronoun is required, or use the abbreviation 's/he.' For instance, “A student should take care to hand in his or her homework.” Both variations have their issues: 'he or she' is awkwardly wordy, and 's/he' is just unpleasant to look at.
6. Make up an entirely new singular pronoun, as in “a student should take care to hand in zer homework.” The other variations I've seen are 'xe' and, inexplicably, 'yo.' None of these pronouns have managed to enter mainstream usage.

As you can see, there's no particularly good way to deal with this issue; that's why we call it a hole in the language.

Whenever possible, I use a seventh approach: write sentences in plural to avoid the issue entirely. Our example sentence, for instance, could be written as “Students should take care to hand in their homework.” If you find yourself using the singular 'they' in formal writing, stop and look to see whether you could make the plural 'they' fit instead. In slightly more informal contexts, you may also be able to write the sentence in second person and use 'you' instead of 'he' or 'she.'

If there's no way around it, though, the proper way to fill this hole in formal writing is to write out 'he or she,' 'him or her,' 'his or her' and 'himself or herself' as appropriate. It may be unwieldy, but it's grammatically and politically correct.

To summarize:

• In any context, structure your sentences to minimize use of generic third-person singular pronouns. Use plural rather than singular nouns as much as possible.
• Avoid the generic 'he' or 'she' unless it's pretty clear that the person in question is male or female. For instance, you can use 'she' to refer to a student at a women's college, but not at a co-ed university.
• Use 'ze,' 'xe' or 'yo' only if you're writing in a context where those pronouns are accepted and commonly used.
• Never alternate between 'he' and 'she.' It's horribly unclear.
• Use the singular 'they' only in everyday speech and informal writing.
• 'He or she' is the preferred approach in formal writing.