Pronouns criteria
The first step of choosing your pronouns is to form your criteria for what you want from your pronouns. Some traits are mutually exclusive, so you need to weigh your own opinions about what you think makes a good or personally suitable pronoun. Here is a sample list of criteria you could consider. Copy this list into another document, and write numbers next to the criteria to rank them by their priority to you. Think about what traits matter to you, even if they are not on this list.
- You want to be basically the only person with these pronouns
- You want to have these pronouns in common with many real people
- Pronounceable, easy to say out loud
- Easy to spell
- No rare letters
- Fits into a sentence seamlessly
- Accessible, easy for people to use who have trouble with English
- Old, created a long time ago
- New
- Commonly used
- Rare
- Unique and creative
- Sounds like a mix of "she" and "he" pronouns
- Doesn't sound at all like "she" or "he", to get more distance from the gender binary
- Sounds like a standard English pronoun, but with a twist
- Part of native English
- Symbolic, describes you or your gender
- Sounds like your name
- Sounds like the word for your gender
- Sounds cool, tough, pretty, whimsical, serious, or something else like that
- Associated with your interests, community, or culture
- Part of a dialect
- Culturally neutral
- Your friends and family like them
- Easy to persuade other people that it's okay to use these pronouns for you
- Satisfactory to people who are strict about grammar
- Slangy, fits well into informal speech
- Fits well into formal writing
The above list is only an example. If you like, you can use it as inspiration to create your own list from scratch.
