His or hers? He/she? S/he? Time to stop this.
1 May
I’m not exactly sure when the whole grammatical convention of writing ‘he/she’ came into being when the gender was unclear, but I imagine it’s a pretty recent development. For centuries (millenia?), you always wrote ‘he’ if the gender was not known. But of course, doing that is no longer tenable.
So instead at some point, someone decided that from now on, we must write ‘he/she’ or ‘his/her’. This idiosyncratic style of writing quickly caught on and became a grammatical convention. But, it’s time to stop this.
In writing, we should strive to remove as many unnecessary words as possible (and not a word more). This is especially true in academic writing (even though a great many academics have missed the memo…), but it’s also true in creative writing. Using five words when just one word will do is nowadays regarded as absurd.
And this is seen very clearly with cases of ‘he/she’. So instead of using two words when just one will do, just go with your gender. If you’re a guy, use ‘he’. If you’re a lady, use ‘she’. Or, do the opposite. It doesn’t matter which gender you go with as long as you’re consistent throughout the piece you’re writing.
But lets stop the he/she stuff. It’s unnecessary, breaks the flow of whatever you’re writing, and is becoming absurd.
I always just say “they”.
Using ‘they’ is a way around it, and I use it a lot too. But the problem with using ‘they’ or ‘their’ is that both are technically plural. That’s changed somewhat of late such that it’s grammatically acceptable to replace ‘he’ or ‘she’ with ‘they’, but it’s still technically not correct.
I swap it out. I don’t tend to make references to pretend people with unknown genders that often when I’m writing, so when I swap them out, it flows alright thanks to the space between cases. I’ll say ‘he’ in one paragraph on one topic. Next time I make a reference to an unknown gender case, I’ll say he, and then next time, she, and so on, though I don’t really tend to have more than three or four such cases when I write.
That, or I’ll say “One”. “When one considers…” and so on.
I follow Strunk… Strunk said to use he. I will obey!
There was an extensive lecture over this in something like my freshman year in high school because someone asked about the reason it was always just ‘he’ when the gender is unknown.
Ever since, I have used he.
I typically use ‘he’.
Well, I tend to use ‘they’ a lot more too or ‘one.’ I guess I’ve grown comfortable with not specifying the gender this way if it’s unknown.
Thank you, I couldn’t agree with that sentiment more. Also, I agree it should be he. Many feminists have problems with that but our society has been patriarchal a little to long to make a fuss about something so trivial at this point. btw/ don’t harp on me for saying that – I’m a girl.
- Kitty XD
I use he, always. Feminists and all their “why can’t it be a girl?” stuff has gone out of control. Honestly, who really cares if it’s a girl or a guy? I sure don’t.
When I have to reference a person of unknown gender in my essays I always use ‘his or her’ or ‘he or she’ for the first reference and then I move on to the alternating thing. In fiction writing, I generally stick to adjectives if I don’t want the gender to be known (such as ‘the figure’). If I don’t care about the gender being known, but still want to conceal the identity of the person, I will just use whatever gender that character is.