Revision as of 18:21, 4 December 2002 edit Vicki Rosenzweig (talk \| contribs) Extended confirmed users 6,791 edits mostly a copyedit, plus note on when books started recommending generic he ← Previous edit		Revision as of 19:17, 4 December 2002 edit undo Ortolan88 (talk \| contribs) 10,369 edits third time. i am getting tired of having to put the reference to the singlular they back in this article, it is more legitimate than '''any'' of the other solutions proposed here Next edit →
Line 3: In [[English language\|English]] , none of the personal pronouns express gender except the third-person singular. The rest, such as ''I'', ''thou'', ''we'', ''you'', etc. work equally well for either sex. For the third person, however, only the plural pronouns may be ~~considerd~~considered strictly gender-neutral: ''they'', ''them'', ''themselves'', ''their'' and ''theirs''. For those people seeking a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun, this is a problem. However, the [[singular they]] has been used in English since the [[16th century]] and is commonly heard today. Usage of ''he'', ''him'', and ''his'' to refer to a person who could be of either sex was prescribed by manuals of style and school textbooks from the early [[nineteenth century]] until the latter third of the [[twentieth century]]: * The customer brought his purchases to the cashier for checkout. * In a supermarket, a consumer can buy anything he needs. Line 118 ⟶ 117: See also: [[Singular they]] [[Sapir-Whorf hypothesis]]

Gender neutrality in languages with gendered third-person pronouns: Difference between revisions