"He looks kind of cute, doesn't he?" Mom said to me. "She," I said, as Dee beamed. "She looks kind of cute."
With that, Mary Norris concludes the chapter titled "The problem of Heesh" in her delightful book "Between you and me: confessions of a comma queen". Part grammar lessons, part memoir, part advice from the aunt next door (who's got a wicked sense of humor), this charming little book (exactly 200 pages) also takes readers inside the venerable The New Yorker, where the author worked for decades as a copy editor.
Grammar as fun reading material? You bet!
Anyone who speaks English is sure to run into the "his or her?" situation sooner or later. If the sex of the person spoken of is unknown, tradition dictates that the masculine "he/him/his" should be used. But of course, this practice has been rubbing countless people of a certain sex the wrong way for years. Unbeknownst to many, yours truly included, he/she has been a HUGE problem (really?), for which numerous solutions have been proposed over the last century, including the Chinese "ta" and that hideous "Heesh" in the aforementioned chapter title.
For Mary Norris, however, the pronoun problem once hit home much closer and harder than you and I could have imagined. Dee, her kid brother and confidant, had decided to become transgender. As copy editor of The New Yorker, whose job includes ensuring the proper use of he/she and all their derivatives, Mary was, needless to say, wholly unprepared. She needed to constantly remind herself of the right pronoun to use when referring to her brother, or rather, sister. Who is to know that in a little grammar book, in a lesson on pronouns and gender (a word not to be confused with the word sex, Mary admonishes time and again), lie such interesting and tender tales?
Now, for an even spicier discussion, are you ready for the chapter on the copulative verb?
"He looks kind of cute, doesn't he?" Mom said to me.