This vexation reached a peak over former Green MP Darleen Tana.
He/him and she/her fail to work for many individuals who do not fit traditional male and female categories.
Fair enough. We live in a world where gender and orientation diversity have come to be widely and appropriately recognised.
Accepting preferences on how people wish to be called is usually both decent and beneficial. This is especially so for minorities who have long suffered from stigma, discrimination and abuse.
Those identifying as non-binary (neither male nor female) understandably find that "he" and "she" do not fit. The non-gendered "they" has become a pronoun of choice.
Such is its currency that this use of they has become widely accepted by the cultural establishment and has made it into standard online dictionaries.
That doesn’t stop Civis from finding it confusing.
Reading "they are" when talking about one person causes a double-take and confusion, albeit short-lived. The word they, in most contexts, is embedded in the brain as plural.
It is a shame an alternative pronoun couldn’t have taken hold, as occurred with Ms a generation-plus ago.
It was little wonder that many thought the Mrs/Miss distinction was discriminatory. While women were given honorifics according to whether they were married, the same distinction did not apply to men.
Many remain accepting and content with Mrs and Miss. Other earlier customs, meanwhile, are making comebacks, notably around weddings.
Nevertheless, the archaic custom of women taking their husbands’ full names in formal contexts is unlikely to return. Even in the early 1980s, there were still a few occasions — more likely in rural areas — where letters might be addressed to Mrs John Smith.
Darleen Tana, who resigned from the Greens after controversy about alleged migrant exploitation and her husband’s business, surprised many when she said she was switching to the public pronoun "they". The reason was "because I never walk alone".
While that was a new and unhelpful twist on the meaning of "they", most media felt obliged to fall into line. Should "they" (yes more than one media outlet) have done so?
Ms Tana’s lawyer then told the High Court at Auckland on August 29 that she uses she/her pronouns. That has made writing about "her" more straightforward. Her flip undermines her credibility further.
The nomenclature of gender/sex these days is challenging, especially for those brought up in earlier times. For example, Civis has come to learn words related to non-binary, including non-gendered, gender-creative, genderless, genderqueer, bigender and agender.
Civis might just have to get over the intrusion and potential confusion of an expanded meaning of they in the English language.
Whether we like it or not, it looks as though it is here to stay.
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Another addition to the ever-adaptable English language, "babymoon", is observed with interest and appreciation.
Babymoons, as distinct from honeymoons, are pre-baby holidays. Parents-to-be can take one last romantic, and hopefully relaxing, holiday before their bundle of joy arrives.
What a good idea. As all parents know, life postpartum and beyond will never be the same again. Think of all the interrupted sleep and constant tiredness, never-ending demands and concerns and responsibilities that accompany the delight and love — the agonies and the ecstasies.
Babymoon, apparently, has been around for a while. It was first used in the 1990s for time parents spent alone with their baby soon after the baby’s birth. It has since morphed to mean a holiday before the birth.
Civis, in ignorance, was unaware that babymoons came into fashion years ago when a certain Kate and William partook. A couple by the name of Kanye and Kim also went babymooning in Paris way back in 2013.
