English neutral pronouns

Most used neutral pronouns

They/them (79.5%) Xe/xem (7.2%) E/em (5.2%) Ze/hir (4.7%) It/its (4.4%) Fae/faer (4.3%) Data provided by the 2019 Gender Census.

English neutral pronouns are useful not only when writing documents that need to use inclusive language, but also for any nonbinary people who prefer not to have their pronouns imply that they are female or male. As shown in surveys, many nonbinary people are okay with being called "he" or "she," but there are also many nonbinary people who don't want to be called either of these. The surveys show that the most popular gender-neutral pronoun for nonbinary people is singular they, but nearly as many prefer or accept some other neutral pronoun. See examples of this in pronouns in use for nonbinary people.

History

In English, people are usually called by a pronoun that implies their gender. For example, she for women, and he for men. The use of singular they as a gender-neutral pronoun has been documented as standard usage in English throughout the past thousand years. However, prescriptive grammarians in the late eighteenth century decided that it was bad grammar because it works like a plural and because it isn't done in Latin.

Prescriptive grammarians of the late eighteenth century instead recommended using "he" as a gender-neutral pronoun when one is needed, instead of "singular they."