Subject
ey
Object
em
Possessive
eir
Possessive (alone)
eirs
Reflexive
emself
Said like: ay / em / air
Ey/em is the easiest neopronoun to learn if you already use singular they, because it is singular they with the front knocked off. Ey, em, eir, eirs, emself. Say "ay", "em", "air".
The set is also called the Elverson pronouns, and it is close kin to the Spivak set (e/em/eir), which drops one letter more. People pick ey/em because it is unmistakably singular and unmistakably not he or she.
In a sentence
Ey is bringing eir own lunch.
Ask em whether the red mug is eirs.
Ey fixed the shelf emself and eir flat looks better for it.
How to use them
- Singular verbs: ey is, ey was. "Ey are" is the one habit to unlearn if you come from they/them.
- Em is the object: I called em. The reflexive is emself, not "emselves".
- Eir before a noun, eirs standing alone. The same split as their and theirs.
- Ey/em and e/em are cousins, not the same set. If someone writes e/em, use e as the subject; if ey/em, use ey.
- Said aloud, ey is "ay". Wikipedia's Spivak article notes the ey spelling was preferred partly because e on its own can sound like he in fast speech.
Ways to practise
- Take any sentence with they and them in it about one person and drop the th. Do ten. It is mechanical, which is the point.
- Say the three sounds together: ay, em, air. Then use all three in one sentence about the person while you are alone.
- Add ey, em, eir and eirs to your keyboard dictionary so autocorrect stops turning em into me.
Where it came from
On record. Wikipedia's article on Spivak pronouns and Wiktionary both credit Christine M. Elverson of Skokie, Illinois, who created ey, em and eir in 1975 for a contest run by the Chicago Association of Business Communicators to find replacements for he-and-she. The forms come from dropping the th from they, them and their.
Who uses them
Identities whose pages mention this set. A pronoun never tells you what someone is — this is only where the word turns up.
Questions people ask
Is ey/em the same as the Spivak pronouns?
Nearly. The Spivak set is e/em/eir/eirs/emself; Elverson's is ey/em/eir/eirs/emself. Only the subject differs. Ey/em came first, in 1975; Michael Spivak used his version in a typesetting manual in the 1980s.
Why not just use they?
Some people use both. Others want a word that is only ever singular and is not shared with the crowd. Ey/em gives them a pronoun that cannot be misread as plural or as a dodge.