5.6 Inclusive Grammar “Rules”
Erin Kelly; Sara Humphreys; Natalie Boldt; and Nancy Ami
Other complicated rules to consider are those that vary not just based on the particular group to whom you are writing, but also those that are open to debate. A good example of this sort of rule is the case of what is now called “singular they.”
If you were learning English grammar in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries (the 1700s or the 1800s), you would have been taught that a pronoun must agree with its antecedent. In plain English: a pronoun is a word that stands in for a noun—it needs to match that noun in some important ways. This rule leads to the following sorts of examples:
- CORRECT: The box is heavy, so it will break the table. (“It” agrees with “box” in that it is singular in number—there is ONE box—and it stands in for things, like boxes but not people.)
- CORRECT: Students must bring their books to class. (“Their” agrees with “students” in that there is more than one student and they/their/them stands in for people.)
-
CORRECT: Thomas doesn’t like to read; he prefers to play cricket. (“He” agrees with “Thomas” in that it is singular in number and gender. Thomas is traditionally a male name, and he is a pronoun for male people.)
So far, so good. But what if you want to refer to one person in a group that includes both men and women and some non-binary people?
According to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century rules, you would be given the following examples:
- ERROR: Each writer must bring to the act of writing poetry their wit and imagination.
- CORRECT: Each writer must bring to the act of writing poetry his wit and imagination.
- ERROR: Each writer must bring to the act of writing poetry her wit and imagination.
The logic underpinning these examples is that “each writer” is singular (one writer), so “their” is a mistake because it doesn’t agree in number. But what’s wrong with “her”? After all, there were male and female poets in the 1600s and 1700s. Had you asked this question, a teacher might have patiently explained to you that the male singular pronoun (he/his) is universal—it can stand in for a singular male person (like Thomas) or for a generic, neutral human being who might happen to be male or female. The female singular pronoun can’t do the same thing. Popular thinking at the time was that gender doesn’t matter when it comes to pronouns in the same way it does in relation to people. “He” can stand in for any person.
By the twentieth century, feminists had persuaded a lot of people that it is problematic to see the male pronoun as “universal.” If it’s okay to have a singular pronoun stand in for any example of a person, some asked, why does it need to always and only be the male pronoun? Doesn’t this sort of language suggest to women that they don’t really count (much in the same way that terms like “fireman” or “chairman” imply that the jobs we now more commonly refer to as “firefighter” or “chair” are only for men)? In their efforts t