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Using "they" makes gender irrelevant. It's not politically correct, it's precise. Meanwhile, using "he" is a statement of assumption, or a statement of not cari

Using "they" makes gender irrelevant. It's not politically correct, it's precise. Meanwhile, using "he" is a statement of assumption, or a statement of not caring about changes in society. I think this was involuntary by OP. Yet, I also think those need to be corrected. What was seen as the norm historically is not an argument for what we should make the future from. If gender is irrelevant in a sentence, then let's correct that by using and encouraging gender neutral pronouns. If anything, this struck me enough in the OP's paragraph to wonder if I had misattributed the article, which is why I raised the point after verifying that the author was indeed who I thought it was. To a sample size of at least 1, the usage of the gendered pronoun was noticeable. Maybe that's just me.

freehunter 10y ago
"They" is possibly more precise on gender, but adds a new layer of ambiguity about how many people you're talking about. If the OP saying "he" led you to second guess the gender of the author, saying "they" may lead you to second guess how many authors had contributed to the article. What really stands out to me is how quick some people are to correct the gender of someone when a comment may misrepresent them as if the content of the article was somehow altered by the word. The OP "involuntarily" wrote "he" because "he" is completely grammatically correct. But you're right, since what was seen as the norm historically is not an argument for what we should make the future from, I propose we just use the word "floobity" to represent the singular, gender-neutral pronoun. Floobity wrote a great article, no matter what gender floobity happens to be.