The Six Mile Post editorial staff has decided to be more intentional about using everyone’s correct pronouns. We want our paper to be more inclusive and respectful to our GHC community. Our staff will make an effort to get every interviewee’s pronouns and use them accordingly.

After deliberating on how to implement gender inclusive diction in our paper, we decided getting individual pronouns on a base-by-base circumstance is best to ensure inclusion for everyone regardless of pronouns.

Society oftentimes uses predispositioned understandings of gender to assume which pronouns to use. This leads to a strictly binary understanding of pronouns and oftentimes the misgendering of transgender people. To be more inclusive as a newspaper, we have decided to change our way of writing to a more progressive style that includes all pronouns.

We recognize that some may not understand that they/them pronouns can be used as singular pronouns. According to Merriam-Webster editors, “they has been in consistent use as a singular pronoun since the late 1300s.”

The singular form of they has been used for hundreds of years to indicate a person of whose gender is unknown. Although the understanding of the word has expanded and can also be used to indicate a non-binary person, the useage reamains the same. “They” as a singular pronoun is becoming more accepted in the world of journalism as “The Associated Press Stylebook … has added an entry for “they” as a singular, gender-neutral pronoun in its latest edition,” according to Travis M. Andrews, Washington Post writer.

With that said, our staff believes including gender neutral pronouns as well as neopronouns will normalize the use of pronouns outside of the binary she/he. Our staff is dedicated to using any pronoun someone we interview goes by.