Do a Colleague a Favor: Use the Right Pronoun
November 7th, 2008Alert: Grammar complaint. Don’t worry, it’s not my intent to figuratively bludgeon you with a textbook or rap your knuckles with a yardstick.
Due to a push for gender equality, the pronoun “he”—and its brothers, “his” and “him”—are rarely accepted anymore as talking about an unidentified person. That’s fine; I don’t have as much of a problem with that. It’s the fact that since in English we don’t have a neutral singular pronoun, people instead have introduced “they,” “their,” and “them” as the substitute to avoid the clunky “he or she.”
The cure is worse than the disease.
Take this line from a recent email:
“Do a Colleague a Favor, Invite Them to Join STC.”
Are we talking about someone with multiple personality disorder? Ignoring the fact that this is a comma splice (since that’s not what I’m talking about here), the writer may have unconsciously invoked the plural pronoun simply because it has become habit—because he or she (not they) wants to be inoffensive. But in most circumstances, this mistake can be easily rectified like so:
“Do Your Colleagues a Favor: Invite Them to Join STC.”
In 95% or more of cases, it’s a matter of taking the antecedent and pluralizing it. Pretty easy, if you ask me. It sounds nicer (since it’s correct). And it shows care and deliberation in your writing.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not picking on STC. I see this in many places, and this STC example just happened to catch my attention when I was thinking about this. It illustrates that even professional writers make the mistake.
Another example, one of the kind that technical writers may run into: “If you have problems with your account, contact the system administrator and give them the following information.” I would instead write, “If you have problems with your account, contact the system administrator and provide the following information.” There is always some way to work around using the plural pronoun incorrectly with just a little bit of tweaking.
If you find yourself running into these situations, please take the extra moment to decide what tweaking is needed. Your writing will be the better for it.
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November 8th, 2008 at 9:42 am
Does thee really insist on using singular pronouns for all singular referents? The language has long since accepted the change from singular to plural form in the second person pronoun. Even Quakers have given up resistance to it except as an in-group marker. So why do people still make a fuss over the third-person indefinite pronoun being plural in form? It has been used for hundreds of years by writers from Austen to Shakespeare. Using “he” for indefinite referents was invented by 18th and 19th century grammarians whose logic overcame their sense. Time to get over it.
(And BTW, nobody has fussed at all over the replacement of the subjective case form of the second person pronoun by the objective case form. That’s why we don’t say “ye” any more, and why I used “thee” not “thou”, above. Language change happens.)
November 8th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Thanks for commenting! I figured a post like this would step on a few liberal linguist toes. Singular pronouns for singular referents? The logic is shocking. Yes, that’s what I’m saying.
I’m not resistant to all kinds of language change. I just cringe when language changes because people use existing words in the wrong context because they don’t know the real meaning or because they don’t care to use them properly. Journalists and other public communicators are guilty of this quite frequently, and they are, as the grouchy grammarian says, the ones who ought to know better. English actually used to have a gender-neutral singular pronoun, but it fell out of use. Yes, language changes, but we don’t have to settle for that change coming from lax usage.
I simply think that the language loses some of its beauty when we do settle.
November 10th, 2008 at 10:57 am
This is not really a mistake. This is a style. I took an editing test, years ago, for a place that emphasized gender-free writing. Which gender was in the eye of the beholder.
You could write “her” without being canned. You could not write “him” without being canned. Every pronoun where I was taught as a boy to write “him” I had to write “them” or risk immediate dismissal.
“Do a Colleague a Favor, Invite Them to Join STC.” would have been judged correct and proper.
“Do Your Colleagues a Favor: Invite Them to Join STC.” would have been judged unnecessarily verbose.
I’m just saying.
November 10th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
In that case, let me say that I’m recommending a particular style.
I had textbooks in college where feminine pronouns were always used, as if that’s less biased than always using masculine pronouns. Another approach, however, is to alternate between masculine and feminine (as long as you’re not referring to the same unidentified person with both pronouns…).