The Awkward Case of "His or Her" - Merriam-Webster Ask the Editor

Despite what the grammar police might say, it's actually fine to use "their" as a singular pronoun. See more videos at http://www.merriam-webster.com/video/index.htm

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[InForObservation]

I'm sensing a theme in Ms. Brewster's recent videos. 18th Century grammarians appear to constitute her least favorite group of people, and these videos seem to be her way of posthumously hunting them down and destroying them. ;)

Somebody get this lady a time machine so she can go back and give those Enlightenment-era meddlers a piece of her mind!

[vexis58]

What is the proper gender neutral way to say "himself"? Using "themselves" to refer to a singular person just feels wrong, but my only alternative is to say "themself", which my brain insists is not a real word.

[NumbFlynn]

@InForObservation As amusing as I found your comment... I had to do this. If she is posthumously hunting them down, then she's the one who's dead, not them. This is her way of hunting them down post mortem :)

[Aeschylus]

0:30 I agree heartily with the message of this video, but I don't think the Authorized Version translators meant "their" to refer to a singular, but to "the brothers" (each individual hearer should forgive his/her/their brother; you put all these brethren together and it's a true plural). And here they're just following the Greek plural genitive αὐτῶν (rather than singular αὐτοῦ).

[rel2082]

Thanks Velma!

[ChazMyTube]

Emily Brewster is right, although for the most part she seems to be mixing formal and informal contexts for using pronouns, as well as dangling of prepositions in her examples.

This one exemplifies a particularly extraneous dangling preposition, since it is also redundant, and the dangling [in] can be completely eliminated ~

See at 1:32 ~ "in whatever situation he or she finds himself or herself [in]" (yikes?)

The first [in] sounds right and it even sounds better without the second [in]?

[benjaminlyrics]

@vexis58  Oneself?

[Varoonmg]

Well she again proves that Intelligence does make men and women look sexy....

Coming from a Gay Man...:)

[timoteodeldesierto]

For God's sake, don't mix gender and number with your pronouns and antecedents. You can always recast the sentence. Again: you can always, always recast the sentence.

[manofoss]

We have the same issue in Norwegian. Finish, however, has from what I understand only one gender neutral word encompassing both 'him' and 'her'. Perhaps we of the Germanic languages ought take a lesson from the Finish-Ugric languages and adopt a third gender neutral singular word and avoid all this confusion all together.

[matprithellodave]

If you think about the words like "yourself", and "myself", then does it not logically follow that "himself", should actually be "hisself"? I have always thought that.

[Holdenon3]

I find that the gender-neutral term "shmuck" works in all cases.

"Every shmuck should do the shmuck's best in every situation shmucks find shmucks in."

Also, the plural vs. singular issues easily work themselves out.

Or would that be "its selves"?