i hear what you’re saying but that doesn’t seem to be the (ahem) case.
if that were so, one would have chosen “she/ her” or “they/ them” – pairing each nominative with its accusative partner and still fitting well within this perceived word limit. one wouldn’t use two separate nominative case words in its place.
there has to be something deeper in this choice. not that it should be treated as sinister or anything; this choice should be just as deeply respected. i’m just curious as to the reasons behind it.
While originally the “/” stood for the cases (subject/object/possessive), it can also be interpreted as “either/or” so people just started using it for multiple pronouns, or even to list their pronouns in multiple languages. That’s all there is to it.
I use “they/she” pronouns professionally because it’s less stressful when people use the default pronouns with me if I say it’s ok.
I get a jolt of happy when people use “they” and a jolt of confusion when people use “she”, but confusion is better than the anger or annoyance I’d feel if I listed “they/them” and got she’d.
And I’m wise enough to not expect people to bother to read my pronouns–they can’t even spell my name right in an email reply where my name is right there. Think “Mickie” vs “Mickey”.
My names aren’t even difficult to spell nor do they have obvious ways to mistype. But I hated accidentally misspelling MY OWN NAME so much that my devices now have like over a dozen ways to autocorrect me into spelling my own name and life is better.
I can’t recommend this enough and my autocorrect list has probably 300 entries so far.
(I finally added the first tranche of autocorrects for my names after an email reply (think “mickay” instead of “Mickey”)).
i hear what you’re saying but that doesn’t seem to be the (ahem) case.
if that were so, one would have chosen “she/ her” or “they/ them” – pairing each nominative with its accusative partner and still fitting well within this perceived word limit. one wouldn’t use two separate nominative case words in its place.
there has to be something deeper in this choice. not that it should be treated as sinister or anything; this choice should be just as deeply respected. i’m just curious as to the reasons behind it.
While originally the “/” stood for the cases (subject/object/possessive), it can also be interpreted as “either/or” so people just started using it for multiple pronouns, or even to list their pronouns in multiple languages. That’s all there is to it.
I use “they/she” pronouns professionally because it’s less stressful when people use the default pronouns with me if I say it’s ok.
I get a jolt of happy when people use “they” and a jolt of confusion when people use “she”, but confusion is better than the anger or annoyance I’d feel if I listed “they/them” and got she’d.
And I’m wise enough to not expect people to bother to read my pronouns–they can’t even spell my name right in an email reply where my name is right there. Think “Mickie” vs “Mickey”.
My names aren’t even difficult to spell nor do they have obvious ways to mistype. But I hated accidentally misspelling MY OWN NAME so much that my devices now have like over a dozen ways to autocorrect me into spelling my own name and life is better.
I can’t recommend this enough and my autocorrect list has probably 300 entries so far.
(I finally added the first tranche of autocorrects for my names after an email reply (think “mickay” instead of “Mickey”)).