Faceoff: ‘he’, ‘he or she’,

‘he/she’, ‘s/he’ versus ‘they’

I enjoy reading your comments on Oxford’s blog posts: they provide an invaluable
insight into your language concerns, likes, and dislikes. Your remarks strengthen my
awareness that we have a sophisticated and grammatically knowledgeable
audience: this keeps me on my toes, to say the least. Of course, I always aim to stay
within the bounds of good English, but I inadvertently incurred the ire of some people
with the following sentence, in a recent blog about forming plurals of loanwords:

Ironically, the person who wrote the question above is revealing their own ignorance.

My faux pas? I used a singular noun (person) followed by the pluralpossessive

determiner their. It’s clearly a contentious issue: several commenters believed that
this was beyond the pale, while others jumped in to back me up. Presumably
the antis (if they live in Britain) are also irritated every time they hear the automated
voice on the 1471 phone service (BT caller ID) informing them that ‘the caller
[singular] has withheld their [plural] number’. This wording also appears on the BT
website:

BT 1471 tells you the last number that called – unless the
caller withheldtheir number by dialling 141 before dialling your number…

When I consulted the two-billion-word Oxford English Corpus (OEC), I found

numerous examples of similar usage from around the world, in highly respectable
sources such as The Telegraph and the New York Times, but two (or even many)
wrongs don’t make a right…so who’s correct and who’s wrong? Is it even an open-
and-shut grammatical case?

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Mea culpa?

Normally, I’d agree with my critics and readily apologize for any blunder:
correct agreement is one of my favourite issues and I’ve blogged about it in the past.
However, I freely admit that when I wrote that sentence, it didn’t ring any particular
grammatical alarm bells (I also have a safety net, my blog posts being checked by
some very astute people at Oxford University Press). What can I offer in my
defence? Firstly, I’m in good literary company: according to the historical Oxford
English Dictionary (OED), writers such asThackeray, Oliver Goldsmith, and George
Bernard Shaw have all used this construction:

It’s enough to drive anyone out of their senses.

- GB Shaw, Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant (1898)

Secondly, I was an Oxford lexicographer in my previous existence, and it’s the policy
of current English Oxford Dictionaries to use plural pronouns and determiners such
as they and their in definitions in cases where, formerly, singular forms such
as he and his would have been selected.

Being inclusive

Why did Oxford’s lexicographers take this approach in writing dictionary definitions
for their current English dictionaries? It’s a matter of being gender neutral: we
thought it important to use language that includes both men and women. In English,
this can cause complications: in the singular, we have to use third person pronouns
(he, she, him, her) and possessive determiners (his, her) that explicitly state the
person’s gender. There isn’t any way of using a singular pronoun to refer to
someone without identifying that person as male or female. When it comes to the
third person plural, English only has gender-neutral forms such as they, them, their,
etc.

So what happens when you want to say something like this?

How much can you tell about someone from (???) choice of Wellington boot?

In the past, there would have been no debate, someone is a singularpronoun and
so the third person singular form his would have been the clear option for the
corresponding possessive determiner:

How much can you tell about someone from his choice of Wellington boot?

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This is because, in earlier times, the masculine forms his and he were taken to
include women too, just as we used to refer to human beings of either sex as man.
But when you read this today and encounter his, you think ‘hold on, don’t women
wear Wellingtons?’. Most people nowadays would regard such a statement as rather
dated and sexist. Fair enough, let’s say this instead:

How much can you tell about someone from his or her choice of Wellington boot?

You could also write his/her instead of his or her, and if the pronouns in question
are subjective (he and she), you could use s/he:

If you’re allergic to oils or perfumes, remind your therapist before s/helays hands on
you.

This approach is inclusive of both males and females and works perfectly well in a
single sentence, but it can become cumbersome and unwieldy if you have to keep
repeating ‘his or her’ or ‘he or she’ in the same piece of writing.

How much can you tell about someone from his or her choice of Wellington boot?
Is he or she marked out as middle class if he or sheopts for a pair of Hunters?

An alternative would be to change the ‘someone’ from singular to plural, and reword
the rest of the sentence if necessary:

How much can you tell about people from their choice of Wellington boot?

This can be a good solution, but it won’t always work (as with the second example,
which can only refer to a singular therapist):

X If you’re allergic to oils or perfumes, remind your therapists beforethey lay hands
on you.

This leaves us with the final option: you can use plural forms such as their,they, etc.,
despite the fact that they don’t grammatically agree with the singular noun
or pronoun they refer back to:

How much can you tell about someone from their choice of Wellington boot?

This usage is increasingly common in current English and is now widely accepted
both in speech and in writing, especially in contexts where a pluralpronoun or
possessive determiner follows an indefinite pronoun such asanyone, no one,
or someone, as in the above example. As noted above, this isn’t even a new
development: it’s found in the writings of such eminent figures as Shaw and
Goldsmith.

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A caveat…

Although also very common, the use of they after a singular noun is stillanathema to
many people, especially in formal contexts. If we were to choose this option:

If you’re allergic to oils or perfumes, remind your therapist before theylay hands on
you.

For our second example, we’d risk incurring much criticism that it was
ungrammatical. This is in spite of the fact that the use of plural pronouns to refer
back to a singular noun isn’t a sign of declining standards in modern English: it
represents a revival of a practice dating from the 16 th century, as the OED evidence
makes clear:

He neuer forsaketh any creature vnlesse they before haue forsaken them selues.

- J Fisher Wayes to Perfect Religion (before 1535)

The norms of English usage have never remained fixed for all time and this
construction may well gain wider acceptance in the future. As always, if you’re writing
in a very formal context, or if your organization has a style guide that expressly
forbids such a practice, then it’s advisable to avoid it (or be prepared to argue your
case and back it up with historical evidence, as I’ve done here!).

The opinions and other information contained in OxfordWords blog posts and
comments do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of Oxford University
Press.

http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/06/he-or-she-versus-they/