Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-2162194-20130713192557/@comment-5918438-20160126233024

I suppose. I was just saying that I don't think "ze" was ever used in a DWU source, while "hir" is certainly correct. Perhaps these writers thought they were coming up with something new with hir, and didn't even know "ze" existed (and maybe they were; not sure when ze/hir came about in the real world). Maybe they just didn't want to confuse the reader, so specifically didn't use anything as a subject but hir name or a description.

But of course, proper grammar isn't strictly speaking real world creep. We don't need "him" used in a sentence to know to use it that with somebody called "he". The only reason I'm at all reluctant is because I'm not sure ze/hir was actually the intent at the time. I think it's notable that ze/he/she/etc is specifically avoided, but it also leaves us in a funny place.

In the real world, hir is most commonly used with ze. Ze told hir that hir wallet had been stolen.