The men and women of the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly on Thursday night adopted an ordinance that removes gender-specific pronouns and replaces them with grammatically incorrect pronouns in city code.

They’re going to use pronouns they hope won’t offend.

• “He” and “She” is now called a “They.”
• “His” and “Hers” possessive is now to be known as “Their.”
• “Him” and “Her” would now be a “Them.”

The Assembly voted unanimously to make the change to lessen the chance that someone might not feel included because of the use of a binary gender pronoun.

The ordinance No. 2019-09 amends the borough’s code of ordinances to “modify any and all masculine and/or feminine language to gender neutral pronounces; and to amend FNSBC 1.04.080 regarding gender.”

The change to using singular gender pronouns like “They” is, of course, grammatically incorrect. It also creates yet another grammar problem:

Do you follow the now-singular word “They” with “is,” as in “They is”? Or do you write “They are,” when referring to a singular person?

None of it is clear, but in 2017, the Associated Press added “They” as a singular pronoun to its AP Style Book, while advising people to try to write around the awkwardness.

But it likely will lead to confusion and misunderstanding, even in city code.

AN EXAMPLE OF THE GRAMMAR NIGHTMARE

Consider, for a moment, this sentence found in a story in today’s Boston Globe about a murder:

“Jassy Correia loved to get her toddler daughter all dressed up and take her to Flames restaurant in Grove Hall to sit and eat oxtails together. They zoomed down slides at the playground, lay in bed and goofed around taking videos, and watched “Enchanted” and “Baby Shark.”

“When Correia’s friends called her on FaceTime, sometimes they would see her sweet little lookalike Gabriella, and Correia laughing nearby. She was a good mother, family and friends said — it was the most important thing to her. Correia, 23, had built her life around her child, who just turned 2. She had their future planned out.

“On Friday, the day after her body was found in a man’s car trunk in Delaware, authorities disclosed that Correia had been mutilated after leaving a Boston nightclub early Sunday morning. They announced that a Providence engineer had been charged with “kidnapping, failure to report death, and mutilation of a dead body.’’

Now, to put the story in the new Fairbanks North Star Borough gender-neutral style:

“Jassy Correia loved to get their toddler daughter all dressed up and take them to Flames restaurant in Grove Hall to sit and eat oxtails together. They zoomed down slides at the playground, lay in bed and goofed around taking videos, and watched “Enchanted” and “Baby Shark.”

“When Correia’s friends called them on FaceTime, sometimes they would see their sweet little lookalike Gabriella, and Correia laughing nearby. They was a good mother, family and friends said — it was the most important thing to them. Correia, 23, had built them life around them’s child, who just turned 2. They had their future planned out.

“On Friday, the day after their body was found in a man’s car trunk in Delaware, authorities disclosed that Correia had been mutilated after leaving a Boston nightclub early Sunday morning. They announced that a Providence engineer had been charged with “kidnapping, failure to report death, and mutilation of a dead body.’’

There are just too many “they” references, forcing readers to slow down, piece together the meaning, and and take apart the sentences. In the end, there’s no making sense of the gender-neutral story.

Perhaps the good men and women of Fairbanks will reconsider before they commit further grammatical mutilations.