Spokesfolks?

You’ve finally landed the biggest name possible to go on a nationwide tour to talk up your client's product or service. What a relief. Now the hard part: Is he a spokesperson or spokesman? Is she a spokeswoman? (Maybe a spokeswomyn?) If there’s more than one of them going on tour, are they spokespeople? Spokespersons? Spokesfolks?   Ok, lose the last suggestion. It was just an idea.   AP actually weighs in on this, though its entry is too limiting. It says: "spokesman, spokeswoman But not spokesperson. Use a representative if you do not know the sex of the individual."   Sometimes, though, even if you know the gender, you want to be more neutral – maybe we're all just conditioned to be PC 24/7, but spokesman and spokeswoman somehow sound sort of sexist, like,  why am I specifying this person's gender? What then, AP person? Representative is OK, but in a press release or other media material, it may be misleading and vague.   I checked four leading newspapers – The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and the (UK) Daily Mail – and found that while each uses spokesman and spokeswoman, even when the gender of the individual is obvious, they also use spokesperson and even spokespersons and spokespeople. Heck, The New Yorker, hardly loosey-goosey with the English language, uses spokespeople and spokesperson.   My rule of thumb in these matters is that if a word or phrase is good enough for these august publications, they’re good enough for you and me (and AP).

Comments

[Anthony]

Great post, Dan. With all due respect, I personally think it was ironic you used "24/7" in this post since it is one of the "10 Most Overused Expressions" you referenced last week.

[Tasha]

I vote for "spokesperson" in all situations. Classifying by gender is, I think, still making gender an issue.

"Spokesfolks" made me chuckle, though.