‘They will (someday) replace he and she, making them as archaic as thee and thou’ (ix), begins Helen Seltzer Krauthamer in her introduction to the ‘pronoun problem’ (chapter 1), in which singular they has emerged as a hypervisible aspect of language use, unbecoming of a function word. This work is less addressed to linguists and more to educators, editors, and aspiring allies to gender-expansive individuals. Each chapter ends with an annotated bibliography and a set of activities, which can be used to hone one's prodar, or ‘sensitivity to pronouns whenever they occur’ (7).

Krauthamer distinguishes between five uses of they, the unexceptional plural use and four contested singular uses, before describing the state of play of singular they in print journalism and on Broadway (chapter 2), in the expression of nonbinary identity (chapter 3), in reference to pets, planets, and institutions (chapter 4), in comparative perspective with thou (chapter 5), and in reference to God (chapter 6). In this last chapter, a mere five pages, she cautions: ‘I am no scholar of religions, so what is represented here is merely a sketch of what is on the web, but it would be an interesting topic for others to research’ (85). For some, this may read as laudable intellectual humility; for others, it may read as a way to excuse oneself from doing the deep research required to raise a complex topic, especially in light of the book's marked overreliance on Google (five mentions) and Wikipedia (six mentions). The book ends with a discussion of neopronouns (e.g. fleur/fleurs/fleurself, chapter 7) and a meditation on how pronouns in English queer the distinction between function and content, given the efflorescence of new pronouns and their status as a contested site of sociolinguistic reflection (chapter 8).

Krauthamer proposes that the loss of thou may be tied to the difficulty of determining social class in an industrialising America, ‘where clothing styles could no longer distinguish the aristocrat from the cobbler’ (73). Analogously, as it becomes harder to determine gender as a result of increased openness, fluidity, and nonconformity, she reasons that we may lose she and he as well. Although Krauthamer defends pronominal self-determination on the grounds of ‘mutual respect’ (117) and invites the gender-hegemonic to empathise with the gender-diverse (e.g. Activity 1. Visit the pronoun dressing room and ‘try on’ new pronouns, 98), her gender-etherealising prediction is not one that respects the experience of those who find safety in she and he, including but not limited to binary trans persons. Other troubling parts of this volume include the use of Eskimo-Inuit (40, not only is this not a language family, it includes a slur), the use of Hunter Shackelford's dead name (106), and the conflation of intersex with gender identity: ‘1 percent of the population is intersex, that is, people who do not identify with either gender’ (114). Faux pas such as these detract from the author's otherwise commendable intentions.