He, she or they?

For many, many years, when writers, both male and female, needed a pronoun to refer to someone of undetermined sex, male pronouns were always used — he and him. All readers understood, without confusion.

Then at some point in the lifetimes of many of us, someone decided that this is sexist, and thus the confusion began. Some writers began writing only she and her in these instances, as if this were somehow fair or perhaps retribution for past mistakes. Whenever I encounter this, my first instinct is still to try to find the woman in the text I somehow missed.

Other writers alternate, using a masculine pronoun, then a feminine pronoun, then a masculine pronoun, etc. Jane Smily uses a variation of this method in her book 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel. She uses feminine pronouns when referring to a reader, perhaps because most readers these days are, in fact, female. When writing about a writer, especially an imagined writer of an earlier age, she uses masculine pronouns, perhaps because most writers at that time were, in fact, male. Near the end of her book, she uses both masculine and feminine pronouns in the same paragraph. Talk about confusing.

William Shakespeare

Other writers try to  avoid confusion by using they in reference to just one person. I have read arguments for this usage, and I can even agree, up to a point. Even William Shakespeare used they when referring to a single individual. And yet I still find this confusing. How can one person be a they?

So why not write in such a way that they actually refers to multiple people? This is what I do in my own writing, and it works nearly every time. When Smiley refers to a reader in her book. she could have simply referred to readers instead. She could have written about writers in general rather than just one imagined writer. Almost any sentence can be rewritten in this way. The they pronoun includes everybody, and this way of writing satisfies those of us who are sticklers for singular/plural consistency..

On those rare occasions when I actually do need a singular pronoun, I go with the masculine one. If other writers can use she or her and get away with it, why can't I use he or him?