Pronouns

As you well know, a pronoun takes the place of a noun (called the antecedent). Unlike a noun, however, a pronoun defines the viewpoint in your writing. Are you talking about yourself (first person), are you talking directly to the audience (second person), or are you referring to a person who is neither the speaker nor the audience (third person)? This section considers two points of pronoun usage that affect viewpoint: (1) consistency of pronouns in a sentence or passage, and (2) sexist pronouns.

Consistency: Viewpoint and Number

Pronouns must agree with one another and with their antecedents in number and in viewpoint (person). The following table summarizes which personal pronouns are singular and which are plural, as well as which are first person, second person, and third person:

If you use pronouns to refer to an antecedent more than once in a sentence or paragraph, it’s important that they be consistent in person and number. Consider the following sentence:

If, by chance, you find another person more suitable as a wife than the wife I already have, I want the liberty to replace my present wife with another one.

This sentence shifts viewpoint from second person to first-person singular, and as a result it is confusing to the reader.

When corrected, the sentence maintains a consistent first-person singular viewpoint:

If, by chance, I find another person more suitable as a wife than the wife I already have, I want the liberty to replace my present wife with another one.

—Judy Brady

Consistency is also important when using indefinite pronouns. (An indefinite pronoun is one that does not have a specific antecedent.) Consider the singular indefinite pronoun one as it is used here:

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

—Virginia Woolf

This sentence begins with the singular indefinite pronoun one and sticks with one. The sentence would be much less effective if it said:

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if you have not dined well.

Note, though, that Virginia Woolf could have opted to use the second person:

You cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if you have not dined well.

Woolf’s use of the third person adds a formality to the tone—through the more distanced one—while the second-person you sounds more conversational.

Sexist Pronoun Usage

When a third-person singular pronoun (he, she, it) could refer to either a male or a female, writers have several options: they can combine the male and female pronouns, using or; they can use the plural form of the pronoun, being careful to adjust the rest of the sentence accordingly; or they can alternate the gender of the pronouns.

Consider the following sentences from Virginia Woolf’s “Professions for Women.”

I hope I am not giving away professional secrets if I say that a novelist’s chief desire is to be as unconscious as possible. He has to induce in himself a state of perpetual lethargy.

The pronouns he and himself in the second sentence refer to the antecedent novelist in the first sentence. In using he and himself, Woolf was not only following standard grammatical practice of the 1930s but also underscoring the reality that during her lifetime most published novelists were indeed male. But the world and the English language have changed, and using the generic he, his, him, himself to refer to any individual is not as acceptable today as it was when Woolf wrote. How would writers today handle a discussion of an unidentified novelist? One possibility would be to use the term his/her or his or her:

I hope I am not giving away professional secrets if I say that a novelist’s chief desire is to be as unconscious as possible. He or she has to induce in himself or herself a state of perpetual lethargy.

If writers need to make only one or two references to an unspecified antecedent, perhaps they can get away with he or she and himself or herself, though even the two references in this sentence are awkward. But if there are many references to the antecedent, as in the Woolf passage that follows, the or construction becomes monotonous or downright annoying:

I hope I am not giving away professional secrets if I say that a novelist’s chief desire is to be as unconscious as possible. He or she has to induce in himself or herself a state of perpetual lethargy. He or she wants life to proceed with the utmost quiet and regularity. He or she wants to see the same faces, to read the same books, to do the same things day after day, month after month, while he or she is writing, so that nothing may break the illusion in which he or she is living.

The most straightforward revision would be to change the unspecified singular noun to an unspecified plural noun:

I hope I am not giving away professional secrets if I say that the chief desire of novelists is to be as unconscious as possible. They have to induce in themselves a state of perpetual lethargy. They want life to proceed with the utmost quiet and regularity. They want to see the same faces, to read the same books, to do the same things day after day, month after month, while they are writing, so that nothing may break the illusion in which they are living.

Another possibility for large sections of an essay is to shift between male and female pronouns, using he or him or his for a while, then shifting to she or her or hers, and shifting yet again. Generally, writers seem to like this approach more than readers, who can lose track of what they are reading about, especially if the shift in gender happens too frequently.

Rhetorical and Stylistic Strategy

Although maintaining a consistent viewpoint is a matter of grammatical accuracy, selecting which viewpoint to use is a rhetorical decision. If the writing is formal, then the third person is generally the most appropriate choice. For example, most teachers expect a research paper to be written in the third person. If the essay is more informal and draws on the writer’s personal experience, then the first person (singular or plural) works well. The second person—you—is generally reserved for informal writing, such as a newspaper column, where the writer is addressing readers as though they are in conversation, or for speeches, where the writer is directly addressing an audience.

In the second part of this section, we focused on sexist pronouns. Why do we recommend that you eliminate pronouns that some people think of as sexist? After all, there is nothing grammatically wrong with Virginia Woolf’s use of a male pronoun to refer to an indefinite singular noun such as novelist. But language choice sometimes involves more than grammatical correctness. Throughout this book, you are reading about how to appeal to audiences and how to make audiences find you credible. One way to impress readers is to be sensitive to their likes and dislikes—in this case, to their own attitudes toward sexist language. Many of your readers will appreciate any steps you take in your writing to establish common ground with them. In pronoun usage, meet your readers’ expectations that an indefinite singular noun might just as easily refer to a woman as to a man.

Remember, grammatical correctness and a writer’s purpose go hand in hand.