Are Grammar Rules Dead? Uncover the Shocking Truth About Modern Grammar Guidelines!
Using They for a Generic Singular Pronoun: If we’re talking about a generic person, the old practice was to default to the male singular pronoun. Here’s an example: If a reader likes your book cover, he is more likely to buy your book. We don’t know the actual gender of the generic reader. But using the male default was a biased approach that marginalized females by creating a sense that everybody was male. Many solutions have been offered, ranging from alternating between he and she to coming up with a brand-new, genderless generic pronoun for such cases. However, the most widely adopted practice has been to use they as follows: If a reader likes your book cover, they are more likely to buy your book. Although it sounds odd, it will likely come to sound normal as it’s used more over time. Also, I would offer another solution, which would be to simply use plural generic nouns and pronouns whenever possible: If readers like your book cover, they are more likely to buy your book.
