The best and worst ways to tackle linguistic sexism

ENGLISH HAS a long tradition of wrangling over its lack of a gender-neutral pronoun. For centuries the orthodox view was simply that “he” includes “she”. But in the 19th century, when suffragettes in Britain and America argued that they were entitled to vote, they were told that the “he” used to describe voters in laws referred only to men. More recently some (including this columnist) have argued for a generic singular “they”, which has been employed in this way for centuries. But conservatives insist that it is illogical.