Where I'm Reading From

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NB: Impersonal use of the third-person pronoun has become a problem for the contemporary writer in English. People have grown sensitive to issues of gender. Do I say, “Someone who has been told he is dying and must make his will . . .” or “Someone who has been told he or she is dying and must make his or her will”? My own feeling is that the old “he” was always understood to be impersonal and without gender while the he-or-she formula is fussy and inelegant, constantly reminding readers of a problem that isn’t really there. For the most part then, I have stayed with the old impersonal he and I invite my readers to believe that I do not do this in a spirit of chauvinism, but to keep the focus sharp.