LJ Idol Presents:

I have a question for the room. (Hopefully it's early enough in the day folks will jump in.)

I'm old enough, that when I started writing, we used "he" when referring to a man, or when the gender was unknown. "She" was specific to females, but "he" was inclusive. (Which sounds odd, given the evolution of the use of the word "inclusive.")

Time passed, and we began saying "his or hers" or "he or she." Informally also maybe "s/he." I have occasionally heard that people have used a new word (maybe "hir") - I'm not sure I remember that correctly - but I've never seen that in common usage.

What I have seen lately in common usage is the use of "they" or "their." This bugs the ever-loving heck out of me, if I'm honest, because it's a plural pronoun and it's being used in a spot where a singular pronoun goes.

My question for the room is - how do you deal when you need a singular pronoun and don't know the gender? Does the (mis)use of "they" bother you? Does context matter? If so, how?