One of the active fronts in grammar currently is the growing acceptance–or even requirement, in some cases–of the word “they” to refer to a person of unknown or possibly nonbinary gender. Newspapers and other publishers are struggling to come up with a policy or style about this, while strict-constructionist grammarians shriek with horror and fumble for their smelling salts. Merriam-Webster has recently gone a few rounds on Twitter about it.
The language evolves and changes in response to what its speakers need it to do, and frankly, the lack of a gender-neutral singular pronoun other than “it,” which is unacceptable to apply to a human being, has always been a design flaw. As a longtime copy editor, I did a lot of surgery on prose over the decades to write around writers’ singular theys, resorting to the cumbersome “he or she” or “him or her” when absolutely necessary. But in a society rapidly moving being the confines of binary gender categories, the language really needs to be able to embrace such developments more efficiently.
Back when “they” was laziness, I fought it tooth and nail. But when a real need arises, words must be created or repurposed to meet it. (And let’s face it, as odd as “If any student wishes to be excused from the field trip to the box factory, they may ask Mr. Walters” sounds to sticklers like me, entirely made-up new words like “hem” or “hir” or “blerg,” or whatever, sound a whole lot weirder.)
Recent Comments