When an author sits down to write, he must make certain decisions. Wait, I mean: She must make  certain decisions. No, that’s not correct. He or she must make certain decisions. I think.They must make certain decisions?Perhaps you see what I mean.In English, tradition holds that a singular referent of unspecified gender (example: “author” in this column’s first sentence) should take the singular, masculine pronoun: he. Such practice can be traced back to our language’s Indo-European origins and is linked to the fact that many tongues of that family had or retain grammatical genders.The trend away from this status quo can be traced to sometime around the era of Aug. 18, 1920. Women took to the streets, railing against the countless injustices against them. When not busy in the kitchen cooking my dinner, these young agitators fomented — I mean, fowomented — plans to forever desexitize the dramatically inequitable nature of our speech. Or something like that.And now it’s no longer OK to use “man” or “he” or “his” as the default.This has led to some interesting developwoments.In most cases, the problem can be avoided by merely rewording the sentence, often to include plural rather than singular objects. Example: “When authors sit down to write, there are certain decisions they must make.”Some substitute the words “people” or “humans,” and others resort to the cumbersome tactic of “he or she.”Even worse is the utterly ridiculous use of “s/he” — an abomination unto God. (It also doesn’t offer much in the way of an option for the possessive form … her/is?)In more obscure and perverse examples, we are tortured with bastard terminology like “matshematics” and “herstory.” These words are a blight upon the face of huwomanity.So what is the solution? Some predict that in the future, writing will evolve to mirror what speech has already done: made acceptable the use of “they” and “their” with singular referents. If “you” is grammatically acceptable as both a singular and plural designator, why not “they”?I feel like this is sloppy language at its worst, yet I fear such a developwoment is inevitable, given the evolving nature of language.Let us only hope that they is wrong.- – – -Contact Daniel McBride at [email protected]