Writing tip 30: Use ‘they’ instead of ‘he’ or ‘she' (part 2)

Our writing tip about using ‘they’ instead of ‘he or she’ generated a lot of enjoyable debate!

When you use ‘he’ as a general pronoun you may unintentionally exclude females. Plain English writing aims to prevent such misunderstanding. But using ‘he or she’ and ‘him or her’ repeatedly is clumsy. In speech we instinctively use ‘they’ or ‘them’ when we don’t know which gender applies.

Example
If anyone calls, tell them I’m out.

In modern business writing, ‘they’ and ‘their’ are now established alternatives to ‘he or she’ and ‘him or her’. (Note that you still need to use a plural verb form with ‘they’, even when the sense is singular.)

Example
Call the writer and ask what they mean.
(not what they means)

Some people assume that using ‘they’ as singular pronoun is simply incorrect. In fact, the usage has a long history in English. We’ve included some authoritative support for it in the references below.

Websites and reference books that discuss the use of singular ‘they’

Burchfield, R W (ed.). The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Collins COBUILD English Grammar. London: HarperCollins, 1993.

Commonwealth of Australia. Style Manual. 6th ed. Brisbane: John Wiley & Sons Australia, 2002.

Peters, Pam. The Cambridge Guide to English Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

O’Conner, P T. Woe is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English. New York: Riverhead Books, 2003.

Strunk, W, Jr, and White, E B. The Elements of Style. 4th ed. New York: Longman, 2000.

Williams, J M. Style: Toward Clarity and Grace. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.

Write, Edit, Print: Style Manual for Aotearoa New Zealand. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service and Lincoln University Press, 1997.

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