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Suppose you are writing an academic paper. When referring to an author of a paper whose gender is unknown, what pronoun should you use? "He", "she", "he/she", "they", etc? Maybe you think this is a trivial question if you refer to the author only a few times. But what if you have to refer to the author 10 times or more?

Remark(Nov. 14, 2015) My question is different from the question with respect to the following points.

1) You are writing an academic paper.

2) You have to refer to the author of a paper whose gender is unknown 10 times or more.

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ivanhoescott
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    I don't think the question is trivial. I confess I have gone to considerable lengths to find out if the author is male or female, just so I could use the proper specific pronoun. Many here will favor singular "they." See this well-established question. – Brian Donovan Nov 10 '15 at 21:49
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    If the paper is referenced so many times, it must be important to the academic paper that is referencing it. That being said, I would go the extra mile to find the gender of the writer if humanly possible. – Kristina Lopez Nov 10 '15 at 21:52
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    Since an academic paper will generally be written in the first person plural, referring to its author in the third person plural actually makes some sort of grammatical sense. – Peter Shor Nov 10 '15 at 22:45
  • @KristinaLopez "I would go the extra mile to find the gender of the writer if humanly possible." Could you tell me the reason why? – ivanhoescott Nov 11 '15 at 00:24
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    Because I'd want to give the impression to my audience that I researched my topic, including enough research on the author of the frequently referenced paper to know if that author is a man or woman. – Kristina Lopez Nov 11 '15 at 01:36
  • @KristinaLopez Even if the paper was on physics or mathematics? – ivanhoescott Nov 11 '15 at 02:39
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    Sure. That paper didn't write itself. It was written by a human being with a name and an identity. – Kristina Lopez Nov 11 '15 at 02:57
  • @KristinaLopez Isn't being overly inquisitive for the gender of the author of a scientific paper a bit sexism? – ivanhoescott Nov 12 '15 at 21:16
  • Only if I had a bias one way or the other. Even if I wouldn't expound on any detail of the writer's life, I'd consider it to be a more well-rounded knowledge of the subject if I knew a little about the paper author because knowing who they are might color my opinion or understanding of their work which might, incidentally, contain its own biases based on their background and gender. – Kristina Lopez Nov 12 '15 at 21:24
  • @KristinaLopez I don't understand why you want to know the gender of the author of a scientific paper so much. It has absolutely nothing to do with the content of the paper. Thinking otherwise is sexism, I think. – ivanhoescott Nov 13 '15 at 14:20
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    @ivanhoescott, for you and the rest of the world, the gender of the author of a scientific paper may be unimportant, but for me and how my mind works, knowing more about the author gives me a more thorough understanding of the person which is important to me. If you feel a need to assign a label to that, feel free, but I don't believe it to be sexism. – Kristina Lopez Nov 13 '15 at 14:27
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    @ivanhoescott It's not sexist in the slightest. In English we have the obligation to choose between he and she. Natural gender is ingrained in our language. If we do not know someone's gender, we cannot properly use our language. – Anonym Nov 13 '15 at 17:21
  • @curiousdannii Please see my new edit. – ivanhoescott Nov 13 '15 at 17:41
  • @KristinaLopez Why is the gender so important for you? There are many traits of a human being other than gender. – ivanhoescott Nov 13 '15 at 18:12
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    @KristinaLopez "Natural gender is ingrained in our language." Just in case you don't know, "he" had been universally used as a gender-neutral pronoun before the PC was fashionable in the 1980s. – ivanhoescott Nov 13 '15 at 18:17
  • I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is either one answerable from the relevant style guide, from further research (making more of an effort to determine gender), or being POB. – Edwin Ashworth Nov 13 '15 at 21:39
  • @EdwinAshworth "from the relevant style guide" For example, this style guide does not answer my question. http://www.resphilosophica.org/resources/ModernSchoolman-StyleSheet.pdf

    "from further research (making more of an effort to determine gender)" This does not answer the question, either. For example, what if the author withheld the gender or identity for some reason(what exactly the reason was irrelevant)?

    "or being POB." What is POB?

     – ivanhoescott Nov 13 '15 at 22:46
  • 'Suppose you are writing an academic paper.' Right. I'm in an institution where a style guide is almost certain to be stipulated; if it doesn't cover the exact point of concern, I ask my head of department for help. They go to or put me in touch with the style guide editors. How can ELU help with the differing recommendations different institutions give (and even non-institutional style guides differ in their opinions on the acceptability of singular their). POB means [answers given are {almost?} bound to be] primarily opinion based. – Edwin Ashworth Nov 14 '15 at 00:33
  • @EdwinAshworth Language is not rocket science. Most of the questions and answers on this site are POB. People often vote to close a question as POB just because they don't like it. – ivanhoescott Nov 14 '15 at 00:51
  • Wasn't it answered satisfactorily at Is there a correct gender-neutral, singular pronoun (“his” versus “her” versus “their”)?? – Edwin Ashworth Nov 14 '15 at 01:03
  • What happens if we offer "I'd use singular 'they', 'their', 'them' etc if I'd been given no guidance on what to use", you adopt this practice, and your tutor etc rejects your article because it doesn't follow house rules or their personal preference? – Edwin Ashworth Nov 14 '15 at 12:49
  • '@KristinaLopez "I would go the extra mile to find the gender of the writer if humanly possible." Could you tell me the reason why?' flatly negates your last comment. I'll summarise (1) 'Is there a correct gender-neutral, singular pronoun' has been addressed before on ELU; the 'conclusion' was that people and style guides disagree on the correct solution. (2) If you're writing an academic paper, as you state, the correct people to canvas for acceptable (in their eyes) style are your tutor etc. (3) You're dismissive of Kristina Lopez's suggestion. May I ask why? – Edwin Ashworth Nov 14 '15 at 21:42
  • @EdwinAshworth "Wasn't it answered satisfactorily at Is there a correct gender-neutral, singular pronoun (“his” versus “her” versus “their”)??" The answers to the question you referred to do not answer my question because my question is different from that question. Please read the remark in my question. – ivanhoescott Nov 19 '15 at 02:24
  • Please listen to the opinions of TimLymington, tchrist, Mr. Shiny and New 安宇, and Nathaniel instead. – Edwin Ashworth Nov 19 '15 at 15:02
  • @EdwinAshworth "Please listen to the opinions of TimLymington, tchrist, Mr. Shiny and New 安宇, and Nathaniel instead." Where exactly are their opinions? – ivanhoescott Nov 20 '15 at 14:42
  • They see the question as a candidate for closing; the majority reason is as a duplicate. My vote concedes that you might have a slightly different twist, but that makes it a request for advice on style when writing an academic paper; the only sensible answer possible is 'Either determine the person's gender, or seek the recommendations of the academic institution you're under the authority of.' The duplicate gives the possible answers if one is not fettered by such an institution. – Edwin Ashworth Nov 20 '15 at 18:06
  • @EdwinAshworth "They see the question as a candidate for closing; the majority reason is as a duplicate." So where is an answer to my question in the thread you referred to? There is none because my question is different from that question. – ivanhoescott Nov 21 '15 at 00:38

2 Answers2

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In cases where you cannot be clear, or certain, skip the pronoun and go with noun. Like The author or use the person's last name; any style guide(s) in use at the institution you are writing for should indicate the preferred method, I would think.

Seeds
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  • Like The author or use the person's last name"

    Wouldn't it be awkward to refer to the author like that way many times? For example:

    By early 1830, Lobachevsky was testing Lobachevsky's "imaginary geometry" as a

    possible model for the real world. If the universe is non-euclidean in Lobachevsky's sense, then Lobachevsky showed that our solar system must be extremely small, in terms of this natural unit of distance.

     – ivanhoescott Nov 10 '15 at 23:58
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    Yes, but it could be rewritten to reduce the need. As in:

    By early 1830, Lobachevsky was testing an "imaginary geometry" as a possible model for the real world. If the universe is non-euclidean in Lobachevsky's sense, then it has been shown that our solar system must be extremely small, in terms of this natural unit of distance.

     – Seeds Nov 12 '15 at 17:37
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    "Lobachevsky was testing an "imaginary geometry" as a possible model for the real world." This is not a correct rewrite. Lobachevsky's "imaginary geometry" and an "imaginary geometry" have different meanings. In any case, I don't think your proposal for using noun instead of the pronoun works in general. – ivanhoescott Nov 12 '15 at 20:55
  • Perhaps we were taught differently then, I was taught that if you cannot use a noun in place of a pronoun, you are doing it wrong; because the pronoun is the thing that is replacing a noun, so you can always put the noun back, to clarify. I would also have to disagree on the rewrite, since it is implicit that the imaginary geometry used by Lobachevsky would become know later as Lobachevsky's. Would it not? Surely it was not known by that name when the author first used it. :) – Seeds Nov 12 '15 at 22:15
  • @Seeds there are two related problems in cases like this: jargon and items (theorems, constants, methods etc.) named after their creators/popularisers/discoverers. Grammatically you may be able to swap the noun and pronoun, but the sense may be changed. Perhaps they'd been testing someone else's imaginary geometry a few years earlier and had moved on to test their own. – Chris H Nov 13 '15 at 20:36
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Personally I'd use they as a singular pronoun. If you've got to write it several times, he/she will just disrupt the flow.

See also http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/06/he-or-she-versus-they/

curiousdannii
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    Not very sound advice if you're supposed to be using a style guide with a different recommendation. – Edwin Ashworth Nov 10 '15 at 22:36
  • The linked article quotes G.B. Shaw's "It's enough to drive anyone out of their senses." Note that "anyone" is an indefinite person, hence it is semantically plural. – ivanhoescott Nov 11 '15 at 00:19
  • @ivanhoescott Although I'm sure that someone will come along and tell me otherwise, anyone has never been semantically plural to me - it refers to any one person out of a specific group. If I ask does anyone want to come with me? I'm asking whether one person wants to come with me; if any others decide to come too, they're just icing on the cake. If I wanted to ask the whole group to come, I would say do you guys want to come with me? – Anonym Nov 13 '15 at 17:24
  • @Anonym I think the sentence "Everyone knows each other" is commonly used. However, the phrase "each other" requires a plural subject. Hence "everyone" in this sentence is semantically plural. Likewise "anyone" in the aforementioned sentence is semantically plural, I think. – ivanhoescott Nov 13 '15 at 17:37
  • @EdwinAshworth I think it's fair to work on the assumption that the lack of a relevant style guide leads to the question, and answer on that basis. I haven't come across a journal style guide that goes into that much detail (or refers the author to a more in-depth guide) so this is certainly a plausible situation. – Chris H Nov 13 '15 at 20:42
  • @Chris H 'Suppose you are writing an academic paper' demands that you obey the in-house rules if you want it to be accepted. 'What pronoun should you use?' should be treated either as one answerable from the relevant style guide (and closed as off-topic), from other research (making more of an effort to determine gender) (and closed for 'lack of research) or closed for being POB. – Edwin Ashworth Nov 13 '15 at 21:34
  • @EdwinAshworth, I agree completely with that statement. I'm more used to journal publishers' in-house rules that run to about three paragraphs, two of which are about figures. Nothing in the guidelines would be on-topic here, leaving all that up to the author's discretion. – Chris H Nov 13 '15 at 21:39
  • From Wikipedia: 'According to the third edition of Fowler's (The New Fowler's Modern English Usage, edited by Burchfield and published in 1996) singular they has not only been widely used by good writers for centuries, but is now generally accepted, except by some conservative grammarians, including the Fowler of 1926.' Other style guides (most of them) disagree. So overall, POB. – Edwin Ashworth Nov 13 '15 at 21:52
  • @EdwinAshworth "From Wikipedia: 'According to the third edition of Fowler's (The New Fowler's Modern English Usage, edited by Burchfield and published in 1996) singular they has not only been widely used by good writers for centuries, but is now generally accepted, except by some conservative grammarians, including the Fowler of 1926.'" You don't seem to recognize the difference between referring to an indefinite person like everybody and referring to a definite person like the author of a paper. The former is semantically plural while the latter is strictly singular. – ivanhoescott Nov 21 '15 at 00:28
  • Jim Reynolds has already provided evidence for the use of singular they for a specific (but hard to exactly identify) rather than generalised person. I don't think you replied to this in the thread. Wikipedia has: << In contemporary usage, singular they is used—at least by some—to refer to an indeterminate antecedent, for instance when the notional gender or number of the antecedent is indeterminate or the sex (social gender) of the real-word entity referred to is ... – Edwin Ashworth Nov 21 '15 at 01:29
  • unknown or unrevealed. Examples include different types of usage.... Even for a definite known person of known sex, they may be used in order to ignore or conceal the sex. >> 'Acceptability' doubtless varies across usages, but there is far from a consensus. You say in that thread 'I'm talking about whether it's grammatical or not.' Quirk and Svartvik say that 'grammaticality' is not a black-and-white concept; they suggest a five-point scale of acceptability. // There are often cases where 'the murderer left their fingerprints ...' etc are used so as not to reveal certain information. – Edwin Ashworth Nov 21 '15 at 01:41
  • With the constraints you add to this question, the author would be stupid if they didn't (1) make further attempts to ascertain the person's gender; (2) if this failed, determine in-house policy (which may well differ from the next establishment's in-house policy). // Please don't expect any further discussion on the subject of singular they etc. – Edwin Ashworth Nov 21 '15 at 01:41
  • @EdwinAshworth "Even for a definite known person of known sex, they may be used in order to ignore or conceal the sex." It seems to me such cases had been almost non-existent before the PC was fashionable in the 1980s. And I doubt the majority of native English speakers use "they" in such cases. The same can be said for a definite person of unknown sex. Even if the gender of the author of an accademic paper is unknown, the person is both morphosyntactically and semantically singular. Just because the gender of a person is indefinite does not mean the person is semantically plural. – ivanhoescott Nov 21 '15 at 21:17