• Café Life is the Colony's main hangout, watering hole and meeting point.

    This is a place where you'll meet and make writing friends, and indulge in stratospherically-elevated wit or barometrically low humour.

    Some Colonists pop in religiously every day before or after work. Others we see here less regularly, but all are equally welcome. Two important grounds rules…

    • Don't give offence
    • Don't take offence

    We now allow political discussion, but strongly suggest it takes place in the Steam Room, which is a private sub-forum within Café Life. It’s only accessible to Full Members.

    You can dismiss this notice by clicking the "x" box

Gender-neutral pronouns

Invest in You. Get Full Membership now.
Status
Not open for further replies.

Robinne Weiss

Full Member
Blogger
Joined
May 19, 2015
Location
New Zealand
LitBits
1
I teach writing to a small group of 10 and 11 year olds at a local school--kids writing above their age level, who the classroom teacher doesn't have time to extend. (Yes. Lucky me! I know.) One of my students does not identify as either male or female. In her (she presents as female and everyone uses the female pronoun for her), writing, she often uses the pronoun 'they' to refer to a single person in a genderless way. That's fine until there's more than one character in a scene, and the reader can't tell who 'they' refers to. So I introduced her to the idea of gender-neutral pronouns, and showed her how to conjugate the pronoun ze.

But there are lots of options for gender-neutral pronouns, and I don't tend to use them myself. Do any of you Litopians know if there is an 'accepted' gender-neutral pronoun in literature? I know I'm going to face this issue again with my students, and it's something I feel as a writer I should become fluent with, too.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Further Articles from the Author Platform

Latest Articles By Litopians

  • The Pink Coupe at the Catch-All Station
    About a quarter of a century ago, I developed the habit of working in German car factories. The exce ...
  • Young People Today…
    I went to college to do an Art Foundation course. Yay, good for me. But I was 48. And almost everyon ...
  • The Welsh One
    . We gazed from Cardiff’s seafront as the diamond radiance of a million stars glittered in summerâ ...
  • WE ALL MAKE MISTAKES
    I know there is an increasing upward trend in sales with audiobooks lately; people listening to a bo ...
  • What We Feed Strangers
    My first job on this side of the world saw me driving my boss’s wife’s little red roadster down ...
  • The Road Does Go Ever On
    So, midway through a recent walk through the forest, my phone notified me that I had done it, I had ...
  • Another Night in A&E (Part 2)
    My husband has not had a full-blown stroke.  He has more than likely had a TIA.  He is feeling bet ...
What Goes Around
Comes Around!
Back
Top