User blog comment:Cubears/"Him or her" vs. "they"/@comment-4076306-20131113032034

Hi there! I am an editor on the Fallout wiki and I happened to stumble upon this post whilst perusing your wiki. I have had past experience with this particular grammar question and I will explain the conclusion which I reached after researching it further.


 * 'He or she' is used in gender-neutral singular situations, however it does come off as a bit clumsy when reading it in an article.  Nevertheless, it is grammatically correct and perfectly acceptable to use.


 * In most situations 'they' is used in gender-neutral third person plural.  In this situation, it is correct to say that 'they' should only be used to refer to a group, and as such would not be an acceptable substitution for 'he or she'.

However, there exists a second form of the word they, one which is gender-neutral AND singular.  It is used in situations where the person whom is being reffered to is of indeterminate gender. For the player characters in both of our games, this word fits perfectly for use in such situations.

In conclusion, and in my opinion, 'he or she' and 'they' are perfectly interchangable, and as such, the less clumsy of the two should be used in a given situation. If you want to know more about the singular they, you can visit wikipedia's article on its useage. Hope this helps!