Gender-Neutral Pronoun on the Rise?
In English, there are three main singular pronouns: he, she, and it. When we’re talking or writing about people, we eschew it; after all, it suggests a non-human subject. This leaves us with he or she, which often are easy to use. We use he for male subjects and she for female subjects.
This is all easy enough, but there are two times when neither he nor she seems the right word choice. The first is where the gender of the subject does not matter. This situation comes up frequently in legal writing. In explaining a rule of law, we often need to include a pronoun. For example, For a plaintiff to maintain a cause of action for intentional infliction of emotional distress, he must prove the defendant’s conduct is extreme and outrageous. In that sentence, we want a singular pronoun to “match” our singular subject noun of “plaintiff.”
Writers are conscious of which pronoun to choose. Many are afraid if they pick the male pronoun—he—they will be perceived as sexist. One easy fix to avoid picking a pronoun at all is to make the subject “plaintiff” plural so that we can use the plural pronoun “they” (e.g., For plaintiffs to maintain a cause of action for intentional infliction of emotional distress, they must prove the defendant’s conduct is extreme and outrageous.). But sometimes that doesn’t work well or we’d rather keep the subject singular. What to do then?
