The world of English is confusing.

Wait. Let's try that again.

The world of English is very confusing.

English is complicated to the point that it's considered one of the most difficult languages in the world. Words that look a certain way sound completely different phonetically. I mean, why do we have to use "ph" over "f"? Why do we pronounce "buffet" with a fancy romance language-esque method when it comes to a restaurant with lines of food yet pronounce Warren Buffet's last name exactly how the word looks? To Oxford comma or not to Oxford comma?

Yes, just like every language, English comes with its controversies. You thought twelve years in school or your entire lifetime could teach you how to finally use English perfectly? Well, too bad. But what I can do is show you one solution to a single controversy.

Say you're writing a scene. The character our readers are following sees someone in the distance. Maybe that someone is far away or blocked by trees or is wearing something that prevents the person's gender from being revealed. Or maybe the gender doesn't align with the person's physical appearance and the narrator is a politically correct individual. Whatever it may be, the gender of that mysterious figure is unknown to the narrator or character.

What pronoun do you address them by?

Sure, you can do what I did above. I deliberately avoided using a pronoun when referring to this person. For example,

Someone lurks amongst the forest. The figure disappears behind a tree.

This avoids revealing the entity's gender entirely. However, how long can you use alternatives like the ones above without being repetitive? What if you have a lengthy description of this mysterious person and run out of ways to refer to them without using pronouns?

The first pronoun you think of is "they."

Contrary to sentiments expressed today, "they" was actually a universally accepted pronoun as early as the 14th century. Its congregations such as "themselves" and "their" were used singularly. In some cases, even when the gender was known, a gender neutral pronoun was still used.

'Tis meet that some more audience than a mother, since nature makes them partial, should o'erhear the speech - William Shakespeare, Hamlet

In this case, the pronoun "them" refers to the subject "mother." Even though a mother refers to someone who is female, Shakespeare still uses a gender neutral pronoun to refer to the subject.

Today, singular "they" still is used, but it's considered more informal. This idea is still considered controversial because singular "they" is still so widely viewed as the dominant gender neutral pronoun since its conception.

However, writing in a professional setting critiques this informal use of "they." Some educators accept it; others don't.

Truth is, some people have no idea what to use. It's a struggle between being politically or grammatically correct. "They" may be the dominant gender neutral pronoun, but because it is used for plural purposes, its singular usage is considered grammatically incorrect by some people. Merriam-Webster actually supports the singular usage of "they", writing, "We must remember that the English pronoun system is not fixed. Several centuries ago the objective plural you drove the nominative and objective singulars "thou" and "thee" and the nominative plural "ye" out of general use. It appears to have happened for social reasons, not linguistic reasons. "They", "their", "them" have been used continuously for six centuries, and have been disparaged in such use for about two centuries." Essentially, arguments stem from the idea that English isn't set in stone—it never was. It's orchestrated by the masses.

However, there's a situation that makes using singular "they" very difficult. Imagine you, as a writer, have a group of friends wandering in the forest and spot an ambiguous figure. The writing is in third person. You're confused. Stuck. The deadline for the Pokémon Watty Awards is tomorrow. You exhausted all of your alternatives to using pronouns. Then, in a last ditch effort, your last paragraph turns out like this.

The group of friends all spin around to spot the moving figure. They disappear behind a tree. The mysterious shadow chases after them, using their epic parkour skills to decrease the distance between them.

Wow, talk about confusing. Did the figure or the group of friends disappear behind a tree? The amount of them's and their's in the last sentence just jumble the identities of the subjects in the sentence. How do you solve this? You can use alternative pronouns.

Grammatically correct alternatives like "he or she" or "it" are rendered politically incorrect. "He or she" or "s/he" or "she/he" or anything like that imply that there are only two genders someone could be. And "it" is considered dehumanizing since "it" can refer to objects that aren't sentient.

Gender neutral pronouns have a long and winding history. As our society strives to become politically correct, we try to conjure ways to have our writing reflect our more politically correct environment. If people with unknown or neutral genders can't be called "they", "it", or "s/he" in writing because it's too confusing, what options can we use?

"Thon" as a pronoun was the first known pronoun created with the intent to be used for gender neutral purposes to ever be proposed. In 1884, it was introduced by American lawyer Charles Converse. Converse forged the pronoun as a contraction of "that one", which in theory, makes sense. "Thon" actually made it into the Merriam-Webster dictionary! This word tried really hard to make it into mainstream language. Crosswords used it in newspapers, comic strips introduced the word, and it was presented across several different forms of media.

It never made it, though; it was actually removed from the dictionary. "Thon" sounds like a name, so one after another, people created new pronouns to replace the previous one they believed wasn't fitting. Now, we have "E" and "ey" and "hou" and "per"—point is, there's too many to establish a universally accepted gender neutral pronoun. In the process of creating a single new word to address both the politically correct and grammatically correct requirements, we created over a dozen new words.

So we, the Gotta Read Em' All Club, are going to play devil's advocate and establish a grammatically correct, politically accurate, universal, confusion-free gender neutral pronoun. We're not entitled enough to just randomly create a new word, so we're going to use the pronoun precedented by Wattpad themselves.

When creating an account on Wattpad, incoming members are prompted with three choices when choosing a preferred gender: "he", "she", or..."zie." Wattpad uses "zie" as a gender neutral pronoun, so why not use it in our case? Zie can be used in these ways.

Zie is sighing.

I asked zir.

Zir phone is ringing.

That is zirs.

Zie likes zirself.

So with that established, let's rewrite that paragraph.

The group of friends all spin around to spot the moving figure. They disappear behind a tree. Zie chases after them, using zir epic parkour skills to decrease the distance between zie and them.

So yes, English can be confusing. However, in many cases, the issues themselves are just more complicated than they should be. "They" is a perfectly acceptable form as a singular gender neutral program except in certain situations. "Zie" is applicable to all situations, but people don't nearly use it as much as they should.

Grammar and structure are detrimental to the delivery of your ideas within a book. Confusion with pronouns is just one of millions of issues that affect your delivery. "Zie" is a word—a tool—to solidify that clarity that every book needs.

Sources:

"We added a gender-neutral pronoun in 1934. Why have so few people heard of it?" World History. Merriam-Webster.