Today’s paper has a full-page ad for a type of investment product I’ve been considering for some time. The ad, which had to cost a bundle, detailed why I should leave my current financial advisor and switch to the guy whose smiling photo appears in a sidebar. I was halfway to writing “follow up on this” on my to-do list when I crashed into a recommendation about what I should “ask the salesman when evaluating his product.” Excuse me? No females sell investment products? I could accept this sentence if it referred to Smiling Guy’s company, because presumably he’d know the gender composition of his sales force. However, the recommendation was to ask my advisor. My advisor could be anywhere and therefore could be anyone, including a female.
I imagine that Smiling Guy (or his copy editor) was taught that a masculine pronoun includes both men and women. This principle, the “masculine universal,” was in effect when I was in elementary school. Judging from his photo, though, I’m quite a bit older than Smiling Guy. Plus, I’ve learned and taught that inclusiveness costs nothing and brings huge advantages. Leaving out half the human race (notice that I didn’t say “mankind”) isn’t good business. This fact I know for sure, as there’s no way I’m giving my money or time to Smiling Guy, because to him I don’t exist. I’d rather speak with a broker, investment counselor, or agent than with a company that attaches the word sales only to a man and his product.
Not that I’m blaming Smiling Guy. Well, actually I am, but only a little. The problem Smiling Guy faces is rooted in Standard English grammar and British history. One unbreakable rule, agreement, holds that singular forms must be paired with singular forms and plural with plural. A table has stains on its legs; tables have stains on their legs. The singular noun table pairs up with the singular pronoun its, and the plural noun tables pairs with the plural pronoun their. So far, so good, because its is neither masculine nor feminine, but “neuter,” in grammar terminology. The plural pronoun their wins the hospitality award, because this useful pronoun pairs with plurals of nouns that are masculine, feminine, and neuter.
Their was once considered a good match for both singular and plural nouns. Here’s where British history enters: One highly influential British grammarian decided that such versatility was confusing and declared that their henceforth would be plural only. Because this grammarian saw no problem with the masculine universal, the proper match for a noun such as student was he (singular, masculine), and any females in the vicinity were expected to understand their supposed inclusion in that pronoun.
Enter feminism, sometime in the late 60s and early 70s, and a different viewpoint on language. It became obvious that Standard English, when dealing with a singular noun that could apply to either gender, had a pronoun problem. Some radicals urged the adoption of per to replace, for example, his or her. This effort was as effective as the invention of Esperanto, a so-called universal language created from shreds of many other languages and spoken by a crowd small enough to fit in my living room – and I live in NYC, so my living room isn’t all that big. Other grammarians opted for their, reasoning that this now firmly plural term should revert to its singular/plural, all-inclusive nature. Still others urged a 50-50 split, alternating the masculine universal with the feminine universal (she and her, referring to both sexes), paragraph by paragraph. Personally, I find it jarring to read about giving a baby his bottle and changing her diaper shortly thereafter.
Most English teachers, including me, adopted this rule: Use his or her or he or she when you refer to a mixed group of males and females or when you don’t know which genders are represented in the group. I should point out that my rule comes with a warning. No one wants to read clunky sentences like “every agent should ask his or her client about his or her investment goals.” Solve this problem by rewording the sentence to avoid the need for pronouns (“Ask the client about investment goals”) or switch to plural (“Ask clients about their investment goals”).
Smiling Guy, take note, and perhaps your company will appear on my to-do list after all.