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I downvoted this comment because I don't think it brings anything to the discussion. I'm pretty sure it's obvious to every HN reader (and the post author themse

I downvoted this comment because I don't think it brings anything to the discussion. I'm pretty sure it's obvious to every HN reader (and the post author themself) that "he" is the "correct" gender-unknown pronoun, along with "himself". The submitted post is interesting because a lot of us prefer they/them for the gender-neutral 3rd person singular pronoun[0], and it raises an interesting corner case. I had to think about it for a bit, but I think "themself" sounds most natural to me. [0] Why default to "he" when gender is unknown? Is correct number but incorrect gender better than "they", which is incorrect number but correct gender? "They" is natural to almost all native English speakers and has been used in that capacity in writing since at least Chaucer. edit: Hm, now I wish I hadn't downvoted. Sorry about that. I suppose it's helpful for non-native HN speakers to know the "correct" word for academic writing, as much as it irritates me that that is what's considered correct.

gr3yh47 13y ago
I don't think it's necessarily obvious or common knowledge today as it would have been maybe a decade or so ago. I also don't take for granted that the author of the post knows this since he doesn't mention this current correct usage at all, even to say that it seems undesirable or unsuitable. The above notwithstanding, i certainly don't disagree that informal English has morphed towards usage of 'they' as the general gender neutral pronoun in all cases, as I myself just had to go back and correct "they don't" to "he doesn't" in the paragraph above when referring to the writer, even though his gender is clear from his name. However I personally have no issue with 'himself' being the correct pronoun in the singular gender neutral reflexive for formal English.
DArcMattr 13y ago
I got a lot of pushback from my thesis advisor when I was going with the gender-neutral approach. This was over 10 years ago, and not much has changed since then by the looks of it.

gr3yh47 13y ago

I don't think it's necessarily obvious or common knowledge today as it would have been maybe a decade or so ago. I also don't take for granted that the author of the post knows this since he doesn't mention this current correct usage at all, even to say that it seems undesirable or unsuitable. The above notwithstanding, i certainly don't disagree that informal English has morphed towards usage of 'they' as the general gender neutral pronoun in all cases, as I myself just had to go back and correct "they don't" to "he doesn't" in the paragraph above when referring to the writer, even though his gender is clear from his name. However I personally have no issue with 'himself' being the correct pronoun in the singular gender neutral reflexive for formal English.

DArcMattr 13y ago

I got a lot of pushback from my thesis advisor when I was going with the gender-neutral approach. This was over 10 years ago, and not much has changed since then by the looks of it.