He, She, S/He, He or She, They, Ze

[BvBPL]

Basically I favor the singular neuter form.

You use "it" to refer to people?

 

[GoodGame]

You use "it" to refer to people?

"One"

 

[NovaKart]

I've never seen ze either. I imagine it's one of those things like womyn that only hardcore feminists in the 70s used before even they realized it was stupid.

 

[classical_hero]

As with a language question, an example would be nice.

 

[Dreadnought]

I use "one" as a general pronoun in my work.

 

[GoodGame]

As in "One should keep one's feelings to one's self."

In speech I'd use "they" instead of "one", but in writing, if I strictly intended a singular, gender-indeterminate, I'd use "one".

I was taught that "he/she" is band because it fills up the text with lots of "/" which is not really an accepted form of punctuation. But again, I may have been taught wrong, or rules might have changed. I was brought up to use the comma excessively, for example.

 

[Flying Pig]

I use "one" as a general pronoun in my work.

Where possible, definitely, so: 'one must not eat salad with chopsticks'. However, the best example of where anything but 'they' falls down is the good old example of: 'The police do not know anything about the murderer, except that they have size eight shoes'. To say 'he' or 'she' would be misleading, and to say 'he/she' is just awkward.

 

[JollyRoger]

Men or women's size 8?

 

[Flying Pig]

Men or women's size 8?

Ah, of course - sorry. In the UK there's no difference - size 8 is bigger than average for a woman, and smaller than average for a man.

 

[BvBPL]

Where possible, definitely, so: 'one must not eat salad with chopsticks'. However, the best example of where anything but 'they' falls down is the good old example of: 'The police do not know anything about the murderer, except that they have size eight shoes'. To say 'he' or 'she' would be misleading, and to say 'he/she' is just awkward.

Except you introduce confusion of how many subjects are being discussed. Are there more than one murders and the paper made a typo and dropped the s? That seems to be a reasonable conclusion for the reader to draw, at least as reasonable assuming that the plural pronoun is intended to be used in the singular, particularly since your rewrite has a plural verb. “He or she” is much superior. Alternatively you can use “The police only know that the murderer has size eight shoes,” or “The police do not know anything about the murderer except that the suspect has size eight shoes.” (actually, “wore (or wears) size eight shoes” would be superior in most cases. Unless the murder stole a pair of size eight shoes.)

It seems to me that when shoe-stealing murderers are the lose, specificity in the number of people killing for clogs is a public safety priority.

 

[civ_king]

I use he unless it is more likely to be a female (for example cosmotology) or context necessitates I don't use either

 

[Smellincoffee]

I use "s/he", "he or she", "they", "one", and "Bob", depending on circumstances. I don't like to over-use any of them, and some are more appropriate for formal or informal circumstances than the others. If I am writing an essay that has me using a lot of hypothetical examples, I will alternate between she and he depending. And sometimes I just use "she" to bother hidebound traditionalists.

There's a Star Trek book series (New Frontier) that had a gender-neutral character. The author referred to the character using something like "Zie" as an active pronoun and "hir" as a passive pronoun. Back then it always stopped the narrative cold for me because the words seemed so foreign.

 

[Huayna Capac357]

They. One and he/she are too awkward, and I already say "they" in this context anyway, so it's about time it became official.

 

[cardgame]

He or she or s/he makes me cringe to read or hear more than once. Nothing is wrong with using 'they'.

This "ze" I'm seeing is more commonly known as a French-accented 'the' and I find it unacceptable as well.

 

[Zelig]

I don't use pronouns.

 

[Dachs]

In Danish we have a word (man) that can just be used in place of "he or she".

German as well.

Basically I favor the singular neuter form.

This.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I'm not a fan of using plural pronouns as singulars. (Frankly I prefer to use singular second person pronouns as well, but rarely do as it gets me odd looks.)


I personally don't have a problem with using a neuter pronoun for animate objects or individuals (it seems no worse than using gendered pronouns for inanimate objects, which is common in most languages and still traditional in English for things like ships), but don't actually use "it" either.


When appropriate I tend to use "one."

I prefer "(s)he" rather than "s/he."

 

[Camikaze]

Informally, I'm not sure I've heard anyone ever use anything (correctly) other than 'they' if they're (see? It would've been ridiculous for me to use 'she's' or 'he's' there, and 'he or she' is certainly not preferable) trying to express true gender neutrality. If there's an example, I can't think of it. Formally, 'one'. I guess 'he' is still used as the neutral pronoun in Christianity regularly, but it's not like you'd come across it in many other contexts, and you'd hear 'she' at churches now too.

I mean, who says, "he or she is playing cricket/soccer/whatever" rather than "they are playing cricket/soccer/whatever"?

My first assumption was that 'ze' was what people with German accents are meant to say?

Saying 'he or she' reminds me of:

Link to video.

 

[Tee Kay]

All are acceptable except "ze" and "s/he", the former because it's not a word, and the latter because the slash is unsightly.

I personally use "they", or "he" if I feel like respecting grammar that day.

 

[aronnax]

I always thought that when referencing a position in which no gender was specified, it is appropriate to use male pronouns (he, his, himself) until a specific gender was assigned.

The same way the word 'man' is also an all encompassing term for all human beings.