According to The Chicago Manual of Style, they, as a gender-neutral pronoun referencing an individual, was chosen in 2015 as the American Dialect Society’s Word of the Year. When I first learned about pronouns, a singular antecedent always required a singular pronoun: “Beth brought her laptop to class.” However, some individuals prefer they as their individual…
Month: January 2021
Tweak Your Style: A Quick Lesson In Clarity
Good literature isn’t a chore to read. A character performs an action, and I know what’s going on without having to reread sentences a hundred times. Even if the character is figurative, such as a personified earthly element, that subject’s action verb should stand close by: “Light twinkled off the water while Darkness lurked below.”…