PHWe have a problem with the word “everyone.” When it comes to verb agreement, we consider it singular: Everyone has, not Everyone have. But when it comes to pronoun agreement, then we start to think about the fact that everyone is not actually singular—while “one” seems to be singular, “every” implies plurality.
The traditional grammar rules imposed on English claimed that “everyone” was singular, end of story, and that “his” was the all-purpose word for people of both genders, so they told us to say: “Everyone has his own view.” All nice and neat, except that many of us have noticed that half the world is female and not quite comfortable being called “he” or “him” or “his.”
So then we moved on to solution #2, approved by school teachers everywhere:
“Everyone has his or her own view.”
Which is fine as long as there’s just one mention of these people and their views, but if the paragraph goes on, we find ourselves in a tangle of pronouns,
Everyone has his or her own view, and he or she is free to E×ρréšš that view through his or her vote in his or her local election.
So recently, we have begun to agree that the long-standing custom among actual speakers of the English language to refer to a person or persons of unknown gender as “they” is actually a pretty tidy solution to the problem. It does leave us with a verb that doesn’t quite match up with the pronoun, but it avoids both sexism and tongue-twisting sentences, so a lot of us have decided it’s the least awful solution:
Everyone has their own view.
We should keep “view” singular, if it meant that each person has one view.
The traditional grammar rules imposed on English claimed that “everyone” was singular, end of story, and that “his” was the all-purpose word for people of both genders, so they told us to say: “Everyone has his own view.” All nice and neat, except that many of us have noticed that half the world is female and not quite comfortable being called “he” or “him” or “his.”
So then we moved on to solution #2, approved by school teachers everywhere:
“Everyone has his or her own view.”
Which is fine as long as there’s just one mention of these people and their views, but if the paragraph goes on, we find ourselves in a tangle of pronouns,
Everyone has his or her own view, and he or she is free to E×ρréšš that view through his or her vote in his or her local election.
So recently, we have begun to agree that the long-standing custom among actual speakers of the English language to refer to a person or persons of unknown gender as “they” is actually a pretty tidy solution to the problem. It does leave us with a verb that doesn’t quite match up with the pronoun, but it avoids both sexism and tongue-twisting sentences, so a lot of us have decided it’s the least awful solution:
Everyone has their own view.
We should keep “view” singular, if it meant that each person has one view.
