I’ve long thought that using “they” as a gender-neutral pronoun — as in “My cousin had long hair and they got it cut today” — is just great. It’s been used that way for at least 600 years, whether pedants like it or not. “A person can’t help their birth” (Thackeray in “Vanity Fair”). “And whoever finds himself out of such blame / They will come up and offer in God’s name” (Chaucer in “The Canterbury Tales”). To many English speakers, it has long felt quite natural.
As for the use of “they” to denote nonbinary identity, it serves a real linguistic need, but many English speakers find it confusing. Consider this quotation from an article from The New Yorker on the literary theorist Judith Butler: “More than nine hundred people filled an auditorium in Ankara to hear them speak. ‘Not just academics but L.G.B.T.Q. activists, antiwar activists, sex workers.’ Butler told me that they had little notion of what was happening at first.” Grammatically, it’s easy to read the “they” as referring to the crowds, not Butler. Or: “Butler was met by protesters holding placards depicting them with devil horns. They burned a puppet bearing a witch’s hat …” Did protesters burn the puppet? Or did Butler?
I have been thinking for a while about how to make this new usage less ambiguous, and I’ve previously presented an idea or two. But for written language, at least, here’s a better one: When “they” refers to a nonbinary person, why not capitalize it?
“Butler told me that They had little notion of what was happening at first.” There, fixed it.
Change can be hard, but a capitalized “they” might not be such a stretch. In fact, the habit of capitalizing “I” was also a practical adaptation to avoid confusion, back in the days when m was written “ııı” and n was written “ıı.” A stray “i” floating around before or after one of those could make the whole thing hard to read, so uppercase it went. And now it seems perfectly logical.
I have a personal example. I found it hard to get much interested in capitalizing “Black,” as I once discussed here. I am a creature of habit, and it seemed to me that there were bigger fish to fry. But because an august newspaper for which I write capitalizes it, and expects me to do so in the copy I file, I have noticed myself capitalizing it in writing I do elsewhere, too. It’s becoming a habit. It took less than a year for me to develop it.
I am not suggesting that the merely singular “they” be capitalized. “A person can’t help Their birth” is unnecessary, because there is no ambiguity involved. However, with the new usage, where “they” refers to a specific person, capitalization would create clarity in one quick stroke.
Language always changes, but the new “they” usage has come along especially abruptly. Because it’s needed, why not make it easier to understand and use? Besides, a difference between “they” and “They” is kind of cool. English has too few pronouns overall. Writing “They” would let us sneak in what would look on the page like a new pronoun of a sort.
Incidentally, the Trump administration’s list of words that are now unwelcome in government and government-funded documents — such as “trans,” “privilege” and “female” (?!) — also includes the word “pronoun.” I guess that makes my next book a liber non grata in those quarters, but I remain proud nonetheless of “Pronoun Trouble: The Story of Us in Seven Little Words” which, I would be remiss not to mention here, will be published next week. “Pronoun Trouble” isn’t only about the “they” issue. It’s about all of our pronouns and how they have evolved since deep antiquity — I mean, really deep — and what it all teaches us about how all languages change over time. I’m also going to genially offend many readers by saying that “Him and me tried to lift it up” is not a “bad” sentence. In French, it’d be great.
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