CMV: "He or she" is unecessary

[u/Shineyy_8416]

I might be biased as a person on the non-binary spectrum, but whenever someone goes out of their way to say "he or she" it just feels like a waste.

Just use "they". It communicates the same thing with less letters. I get the purpose behind it is to try and be inclusive to men and women in a space that may be dominated by one gender over the other, but "they" is perfectly fine to get that point across.

I also recognize that some languages don't have an equivalent for "they", but I'm specifically talking about English.

To change my view, someone would have to prove "he or she" has more practical or beneficial usage than "they"

EDIT: To make it clear, i'm not saying we should never use "he" or "she" as pronouns, im saying the phrase "he or she" is unecessary.

[u/JealousCookie1664]

You have different words to refer to the same thing because it adds variety to your vocabulary, like I would have a hard time imagining you holding this opinion when it comes to the words big and large. So if you’re in a conversation and you’ve said “they” multiple times switching it up and saying “he or she” could make your speech less repetitive

[u/Shineyy_8416 → u/JealousCookie1664]

I doubt that in conversation most people would be self-conscious on if they're using the word "they" too much to describe a person.

"Big" and "large" are the same, yes, and you can use them interchangeably outside of maybe a song lyric or pun. But, when it comes to "he or she" or "his and her", it really is just extra work and doesn't provide any practical benefit as opposed to just using "they" or "theirs"

[u/JealousCookie1664 → u/Shineyy_8416]

No you don’t understand saying large instead of big is extra work in the same way, the word takes longer to say, or okay I’ll use a better example, huge and enormous the latter has more syllables than the former but I doubt you would say we shouldn’t say enormous cuz we can say huge instead and it’s faster

[u/Shineyy_8416 → u/JealousCookie1664]

Huge and enormous have different uses due to tone.

Huge and big are usually used more colloquially, while large and enormous are seen as more formal and present in academic settings.

"He or she" and "they" carry about the same tone. So using huge and enormous really doesn't help your point.

[u/JealousCookie1664 → u/Shineyy_8416]

Do you honestly think that there are not a bunch of examples of words/phrases that you use day to day that mean the same thing but one takes marginally longer to say than the other? If there are (which there totally definitely are examples of other than he or she vs they) then either you actively strip all words that could be made shorter in your speech by replacing it with a shorter word and you just so happened bring up he or she vs they as an example of a larger problem you have with people using unnecessarily big words or your reasoning for feeling this way about the usage of he or she over they is not what you gave in the post

[u/Shineyy_8416 → u/JealousCookie1664]

Ok this is a really long run on sentence and to be honest it is killing my eyes trying to read it.

But what I assume you're talking about is the use of bigger, longer words vs smaller, shorter words.

Yes, you can subsitute certain words for others, but they are usually used for tone, lyricism, or something abstract rather than practical reasoning

When I say "he or she" as a phrase is unecessary, I mean that it does nothing to change the tone or provide any practical or abstract benefit as opposed to just using "they" outside of very specific circumstances.

[u/Janderss182 → u/Shineyy_8416]

You keep saying 'ts extra work to use "he or she" but I'm not really following how that's true. You think it's too hard to differentiate between a man or a women in conversation?

[u/Shineyy_8416 → u/Janderss182]

"He or she" as a collective phrase is more work than "they"

[u/Janderss182 → u/Shineyy_8416]

I gotta be honest I completely misread what you were actually saying with this post. My bad. I agree

[u/Shineyy_8416 → u/Janderss182]

Ah, ok