Inclusive use of pronoums

[gdennci]

Hello FCC community,

Yesterday I read an answer that I posed a time ago in the JavaScript forum section. The answer used this sentence:

“…Every programmer googles probably 100 different things a day because he forgot…”.

I noticed that I used to refer with “he” to an arbitrary person that is a programmer. That is not very inclusive.

So my question is: what would be the correct inclusive pronoun in this situation? Also: what would be the correct pronoun if I would refer to a number of people and not just a single person.

best
Dennis

[ilenia]

the singular they is a thing used at least since Shakespear so

“…Every programmer googles probably 100 different things a day because they forgot…”.

@gdennci

what would be the correct pronoun if I would refer to a number of people and not just a single person.

still they, there is not a plural gendered pronoun in English

[gdennci]

Thanks ilenia for pointing it out.

[shaxbeard]

This is an excellent article by a PhD in English (and a “Word Nerd”) on the history of ‘they’ as a pronoun: https://thewalrus.ca/the-singular-they/