If anyone calls, tell hu I'm gone for the day

"If anyone calls, tell hu I'm gone for the day."

"If a student turns in a paper one day late, hus grade will be marked down."

"When we hire a new dean, I want to meet hum."

We all have our pet grammar rules, and mine is gender-neutral pronouns for singular subjects. I loathe the day that Standard Edited English accepts: "If a student turns in a paper one day late, their grade will be marked down." I am generally not a prescriptive grammarian, but on this issue, I feel there has got to be a better way.

My better way: HU

I coined (in my own mind) this alternate pronoun to serve as a gender neutral alternative to "he" or "s/he" or "he or she." I picked "hu" because it is the first two letters of human. I sort of ignored the "man" part and went for the "hu" part.

I usually tell my students about my personally coined pronoun and invite them to use it in their papers. To my delight, a few take me up on it.

But this semester, I had not told my students about "hu" -- until yesterday. Two of my students were poking around on wikipedia in our computer classroom and came across an entry on gender neutral pronouns. Turns out there are lots of folks with lots of great alternative pronouns!

Down with "their" as a singular pronoun!

(When I get a moment, I going to add "hu" to the wiki for all to revel in)