I’m Talking About One Person!
by Dr. Bob Rich
Once upon a time, English had the quaint rule that a person of unknown gender should be referred to as “he.” English teachers managed to get a predictable giggle with “The masculine embraces the feminine.”
Not any more. Rightly, there is an increasing push for equality in every sense, including grammar. Just a note, though: traditional Hungarian culture is if anything more patriarchal and sexist than English-speaking cultures have ever been, and yet the Hungarian language only has one pronoun. This little word can represent your mother, your uncle, your dog, and even your table.
Apart from gender inequality, “he” as the primary pronoun had occasional bizarre consequences. Read a book from the 1960s or earlier, and passages like “Somebody inched around the corner. He...” will seem odd, somehow incorrect, leading to the thought, “but how do you know it’s a male?” And indeed, the paragraph might have continued “...was obviously trying to be quiet. John watched, then from the figure’s way of moving, recognized Sara.”
The first replacement was the pedantic and awkward “he or she,” which rightly withered on the vine of disuse. Personally, I’d be quite comfortable with using “she” for unknown gender. After all, whatever the book of Genesis says, genetically females are the prototype: males are basically females with one missing X chromosome. Besides, there were compensations in those olden days when grammatically the masculine embraced the feminine. It was also a custom for ladies to be first into the life boats, through doors and into carriages.
Unfortunately, using “she” is not the path of current custom. Instead, even otherwise competent writers choose to fracture grammar by using a plural form: “The child threw a tantrum. They lay on the ground, kicking their heels and screaming.”
Not only is this ugly, it is also guaranteed to lead to frequent ambiguity. “Two of the three children threw tantrums. The little blonde grew blue in the face and I worried they might suffer an injury.” Who might? The blonde, or both of them?
The object of language is to communicate, therefore anything that leads to fuzzy messages is wrong. “They” instead of “he or she” is wrong.
Another argument is to look at the processing complexity facing the reader or listener. As you are reading my words, your brain is carrying out complex, multi-level computing tasks. If I have done my job of writing correctly, the meaning you construct is the meaning I intended. But what happens if, from my words, you get the message that I am referring to two or more individuals, when actually I meant one person? Later, when this fact is revealed, you are forced to recompute: extra work that interferes with the job of interpretation.
This is the difference between good writing and bad. Good writing is a pleasure to read because the author has used every possible device to make the task of reading simple. Bad writing is where the reader must work hard to make sense of the words.
So, avoiding the plural when singular is meant is not a question of taste, but of strategy. I want my writing to be enjoyable. I want it to be unambiguous, vivid, sharp. If I use “they” to refer to one person, I am getting in my own way.
How else can we do it?
There is ALWAYS a means for conveying “he or she” in an elegant manner, without resorting to “they.” Here are two examples:
WHEN YOUR CHILD HAS BEEN BULLIED IN SCHOOL, THEY ARE QUITE LIKELY TO KEEP THIS A SECRET FROM YOU.
“A child who has been bullied in school is quite likely to keep this a secret from you.”
“A victim of bullying in school is likely to be secretive about it.”
“Your child may have been bullied in school and never tell you about it.”
“Has your child been bullied? You may never find out.”
ONE OF THE DANCERS LEFT THE FLOOR. THEY HAD A LONG DRINK BEFORE WALKING OUT OF THE HALL.
“One of the dancers left the floor, had a long drink, then walked out of the hall.”
“One of the dancing young women left the floor. She had a long drink...”
“Dancers were leaving the floor. One of them had a long drink...”
So, here is the challenge. Improve the quality of your writing by saying what you mean. If there was only one person, don’t write as if there were several.
MORE ABOUT OUR SHARINGWITHWRITERS GUEST BLOGGER
Bob Rich is quite a crowd. They can simultaneously be an 84-year-old lady and a teenage boy who has killed six little children and a crossing supervisor, so in that book, Bob is “she AND he.” In another book, they are an Irish boy facing the Vikings, an Irishman battling the British, a gentle woman enduring a monster of a husband, a psychologist in our times—and an eight-legged walking plant all of whose species are both female and male, and a person the size of a planet with no sex at all. They can be a lovely Australian Aboriginal girl: Maraglindi, child of the land, fruit of an evil deed, instrument of Love. They can even be a green-skinned, three-legged and three-armed little boy with no head, who will one day become a girl, and who liberates his people from the terrible two-legged invaders from the stars.
You see, Bob writes by becoming a character within the story. If you want to make sense of this little puzzle, you can do so by exploring https://bobrich18.wordpress.com/bobs-booklist
