Dear Friends, Colleagues, Clients, and Future Clients:

Welcome to Edition VI of “The Writing Well” where writing is fun and reading is easy. The theme for this issue is gender neutrality, a topic lacking a fully satisfactory answer. It is ok to offend and engage your readers with some controversy, provided you do it on purpose. That’s a well respected writing technique. To do it accidentally because you don’t know any better, however, is quite a different matter. Read on. This issue is bound to gore somebody’s ox.

And now the disclaimer.  If you don’t want future issues, let me know. You have the email address, and I will promptly remove you from distribution.  Just say the word.  As always, I solicit your comments and accept them with gratitude.  They are helpful.

Jonathan Praet
Editor

How do we go about writing in a gender neutral way?  “John is my friend.  I have known him for years.”  Nobody will find that offensive because I know John, and he is a “he.”  This next sentence, however, may raise some eyebrows.  “When I speak to a writer, I always ask him where he finds his inspiration.”  Hmmm.  I have now unnecessarily offended half my readership.  Can’t women write?   (Chauvinists, don’t answer that.  The question is rhetorical.)   So, what to do?  Here are a few options.

  1.    Make it plural.  “When I speak to writers, I always ask them where they find their inspiration.”  In this   example, you lose nothing in context, and nobody is seething.  The reader can move happily on.

  2.   Repeat the noun.  “When I speak to a writer, I always ask where that writer finds inspiration.”  Here, we sacrificed a great deal.  Repetition of the noun is boring, and it makes the sentence too long.  Better:  “When I speak to a writer, I always ask the scribe about inspiration.”  This is a bit contrived, but you can substitute a homonym for the initial noun.  Not perfect, but usable.

  3.    “When I speak to a writer, I always ask them where they find inspiration.”  A writer, of course, is not a “they.”  The grammar is blatantly wrong and discordant.  It is, however, a widely accepted and practical solution to a thorny problem.  It may well become the gold standard in years to come.  Many writers of great reputation have accepted this compromise, and while I don’t like it in my role as an amateur grammarian, it is likely to win the day.   This is probably your best solution.

  4.    Use both pronouns.  “When I speak to a writer, I always ask him or her about inspiration.”  This adds extra words to the sentence, which flies in the face of the sacred mantra that “less is more,” but it is inclusive.  It’s a close call.  The same concept applies, for example, to:  “When a writer begins a story, he/she should have a plan.”  This is not a division problem in mathematics, and you should avoid the slash.  Period.  It is contrived and jarring.  Of the two options, the “he or she” choice is preferable.

  5.    Interchange the pronouns.  “When I speak to a writer, I always ask her about inspiration. … A writer will often tell me that he looks inward to his own life experience for subject matter.”   This option only confuses readers.  In your attempt to be gender neutral and sometimes use a him and other times a her, you have traded clarity for political correctness.  Sacrificing clarity is always a bad idea.  If you choose one pronoun over the other, stick with it at least for the full paragraph.  

  6.     Use the female pronoun instead.  “When I speak to a writer, I always ask her where she finds inspiration.”  This is no better than using he or him because you are still showing preference for one sex over the other.  Some writers do this because they are trying to correct a past injustice.  In fact, they are just creating a new one.  Unless the context is obviously feminine, e.g., you are writing about mothers, this is no better than the first example.

Good writing should not be noticed, which is to say that it does not jar, confuse, or unintentionally offend.   In the ideal world, your reader moves blissfully along concentrating on the content, not the style.  If anyone ever tells you something you wrote was easy to read, your chest should swell with pride.  Gender neutral writing makes the task a bit harder, but not impossible.
 
Final Note:  In this newsletter, I address my readers directly.  I say things like: “You, dear reader, should have a plan before you start writing.”  And that is example 7.  You cannot always do this, but it has two key benefits.  It is gender neutral, and it engages your reader directly.  Note that use of the second person, i.e., “you,” avoids the “him or her” dilemma.

It’s SAT time, and you are preparing for your ordeal, that rite of passage that gains you entry to Harvard or the local community college.  It can all come down to one thing:  Capitalization.  Well, probably not, but it still matters.  So, here’s your test.  Something is wrong with each example.  (And don’t say: “Yes.  They’re all boring.”  That’s not the point.)   See what you can do with them.
 
 
    1.     The amazon river is the largest in brazil
            The Amazon River is the largest in Brazil.
 
    2.     Let’s go now.  yes.  now.
            Let’s go now.  Yes.  Now.

    3.    I have two uncles, and one of them, uncle Bill, played for Vince Lombardi.
           I have two uncles, and one of them, Uncle Bill, played for Vince Lombardi.

    4.    I think mayor Schmidt is a democrat.
           I think Mayor Schmidt is a Democrat.
 
English rules of capitalization are complex, and you could probably earn your Phd in them.  Ooops.  I mean PhD.  They torment grammar school students, foreigners learning the language, and native speakers at every turn.  Here are a few fundamental rules.  (There are many more, but I don’t want your mind to explode.)
 
Capitalize These Things:
 
   ◆ First word of a sentence, even if the sentence is only one word.  Yes.

   ◆ First word of a direct quotation, e.g., Bill said: “Baseball is my favorite sport.”

   ◆ Names of landmarks, rivers, mountains.  E.g., Amazon River, Yankee Stadium

   ◆ Words indicating family relationships when the name is attached, e.g., Uncle Bill, Grandma Moses.

   ◆ Titles, e.g., Mayor Schmidt, General Powell, Professor Anderson

   ◆ Words derived from proper names. The Byzantine Empire

This is not the most exciting stuff in grammar, but it is important.  And it is often ignored.   Keep these capital ideas in mind, and your writing will be that much easier to read.